Rather than a historical tale of a legend, it focuses on whimsy and adventure. In some way, this book reminded me of Peter Pan and Wendy, with its lighthearted tone and focus on children’s imagination. In 2014, The Sword in the Stone was nominated for the 1939 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Novel. Whimsy and magic, The Sword in the Stone has remained a classic youth fantasy novel filled with the fantastic and bizarre, not to mention a lot of imagination. When Merlyn can change you into a grass snake or a badger, you get a first-rate education from the beasts of the natural world and when you live in a castle near the forest, adventure is always calling. “I think we had better climb up this tree… You never know what will happen in a joust like this.” page 87 Merlyn seems wise and mysterious, but more importantly, he knows magic. Every boy wants to have adventures, and when Wart (rhymes with Art), finds stumbles across a cabin in the forest, he gets what he wants.
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The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them-and Bret in particular-with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city. The only way he will get anything from her is if she dies. Van Aldin tries to buy Derek off, which he refuses, even though he faces mounting debts with no income besides Ruth’s. He also gives her the fabulous gift of a rare ruby, with a history of murder attached to it. Just before departing for a trip to the Riviera on the Blue Train, a luxury, overnight train through France, she agrees to her father’s counsel to divorce her philandering husband, Derek Kettering, whose most recent “bit of stuff” is an opportunistic dancer, Mirelle. The plot revolves around the murder of Ruth Kettering, daughter of American tycoon, Rufus Van Aldin. But I thought it contained some interesting plot twists and a surprise ending that I wasn’t looking for. It wasn’t one of her favorites and one she struggled to write. This was preceded by a lesser-known train mystery, The Mystery of the Blue Train, published six years earlier. Summary: A rich heiress carrying a rare ruby is murdered on the fashionable overnight train to the French Riviera on which retired detective Hercule Poirot happens to be riding.Īgatha Christie’s most well-known train mystery is Murder on the Orient Express (1934). New York: William Morrow, 2005 (originally published in 1928). The Mystery of the Blue Train (Hercule Poirot #6), Agatha Christie. The restored chapters lend resonance and add another reason to read this masterpiece by one of our greatest living historical novelists. This powerful novel combines adventure, wisdom and humor in an imaginative historical mix. Events like Salamis and Marathon, so central and triumphant from a Greek perspective, are treated as sideshows hindering what would have been the more logical and lucrative conquests of wealthy India and fragmented China. Spitama, half Mede and half Greek but a product of the Persian Empire, looks on Greeks as devious inhabitants of a cultural and military backwater. 10FOUNDATION BOOKS, Glenraven (Hardcover)Holly Lisle, Earthworms (Keeping Minibeasts)Barrie. The restored section, “The Burning of Sardis,” helps to clarify the novel’s perspective. The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnClare Dwig Dwiggins. Spitama serves as an ambassador for a series of Persian Great Kings, starting with Darius, who “dreamed of cows,” the Indo-Aryan symbol for wealth. More importantly, he converses with wise men such as the self-involved Buddha, the skeptical and frustrated Confucius, the unquestioning and self-satisfied Lao-Tse, and Socrates, as poor a philosopher as he was a stonemason in the view of the narrator. Cyrus Spitama, the fictional grandson of Zoroaster who narrates, ranges from Greece to Cathay, meeting such leaders as Pericles, Darius, King Bimbisara and Lord Huan. This classic novel has been reissued, including a previously cut section that ties East and West together across the 5th Century B.C. Historical fiction accepts limitations as to time, but works like Creation have freed the genre from the constraints of geography. With new friends who will do whatever they can to be there for her, a cursed pop-star, and her magically-inclined aunts–Effie’s life is about to get interesting. Life in Brooklyn takes a strange twist for Effie as she learns more about her family and herself. Really, really, really WEIRD! The secretly-magic kind of weird and that makes Effie wonder. Could there really be witches in Brooklyn?!Įffie’s aunts are weird. A middle-grade graphic novel adventure filled with magical hjinks for fans of Phoebe and Her Unicorn and Making Friends. There’s a new witch in town! Life in Brooklyn takes a strange turn when Effie discovers MAGIC runs in the family. She trained and worked both as a teacher and as a nurse, later drawing from her experiences to create the many humorous situations in which she placed her appealing young characters. Parkinson was born in 1906 in Oconto County, Wisconsin. Written by an accomplished storyteller, this touching and humorous tale is a great family read-aloud. So begin four rather harrowing weeks in which the Brookfield Bumblebees have the opportunity to discover that things are truly not always what they seem to be. He seems to be particularly captivated by Trent’s offbeat and lovable family made up of dad, mom and seven sons. However, the boys, especially Trent, cannot get rid of Archibald-he is there every time they turn around. The dismal situation is not improved by the arrival of a new boy, Archibald Brewster, who wears a suit and tie and is taken to and from school by a chauffeur-he is NOT the answer to the Brookfield Bumblebees’ prayers. His buddies Trent, Wilmer and Harley are not happy, but they get only gleeful heckling, rather than sympathy from classmates Wonderful Wanda, Gorgeous Glenora and Susie Scott. In this amusing story-that is both slightly vintage and completely timeless- good old Ralph Jackson has deserted Brookfield School (his family has had to move to another city) just four weeks before the “picnic day” baseball game against the Lawson Lions. Download Good Old Archibald Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle Hiram spends much of the middle of the novel doing two things: trying to get his magical power back, and trying to free himself and the people he loves. Instead he finds himself on the dry land of the Lockless plantation. Oddly, when he is out of the water, he’s nowhere near the collapsed bridge. While Hi is struggling to save himself, the selfish Maynard cries out for Hi to help him. Suddenly the bridge disappears and both Maynard and Hi are plunged into the water. When we first meet Hi, he is driving his white half brother Maynard in a carriage over a bridge. Hi is the mulatto son of his master and his slave mother who was sold years ago. We are introduced to Hiram Walker (called Hi throughout the novel), a house slave on the Lockless plantation in Virginia. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a debut novel that has both significant pluses and minuses. Grover and Meg figure out it is a tree that makes fruit similar to strawberries, and Meg grows the seeds into the wall. It is angry at being ignored, but tells him that they need an abuteus plant. Meg duct tapes him to Grover’s back and the three climb as Meg uses packs of seeds to summon plants to slow the birds down.Īpollo consults the arrow of Dodona, a magical artifact that speaks only to him, but entirely in Shakespearean English. When Grover finds the path to Palm Springs, a flock of deadly birds called strixes attack, and Apollo is paralyzed. He says he, Meg, and their Satyr guide Grover have been lost in the Labyrinth for two days, Apollo is becoming weaker and his frequent visions are intense and disorienting. While Apollo is reluctant to share this story, calling it the worst week of his life, he knows that Zeus expects him to write it down for the future. The Trials of Apollo: Book Three: The Burning Maze. The following version of this novel was used to create this study guide: Riordan, Rick. This deluxe hardcover edition of Fangs features an "engraved" red cloth cover, dyed black page trim, and 25 exclusive comics not previously seen online. Together they enjoy horror films and scary novels, shady strolls, fine dining (though never with garlic), and a genuine fondness for each other's unusual habits, macabre lifestyles, and monstrous appetites.įirst featured as a webcomic series on Tapas, Fangschronicles the humor, sweetness, and awkwardness of meeting someone perfectly suited to you but also vastly different. This all changes one night in a bar when she meets Jimmy, a charming werewolf with a wry sense of humor and a fondness for running wild during the full moon. A New York Times bestselling love story between a vampire and a werewolf by the creator of the enormously popular Sarah's Scribbles comics.Įlsie the vampire is three hundred years old, but in all that time, she has never met her match. In this final book of the Adaptation series Carmella, Bilal and baby Raj will take you on a journey of love, loyalty and a battle that transcends galaxies. As Bilal's time on earth comes to a close he will need to fight against everything that he thought he knew about life in order to live the life that he's always desired. In book two Bilal has been granted five years by the Centaurians to study his human mate and child, but each day he only falls deeper in love with his family and life as a human. But now the risks are grave as Bilal cannot imagine leaving her and his child behind-yet the Centaurians have other ideas. He does an impetuous act of kindness by impregnating her with a child to help ease her loneliness. Pepper has achieved remarkable success as an independent author and is a bestselling author on, ALLROMANCE ebooks, Barnes and Noble and. She was born and currently lives in Cincinnati. In book one Carmella comes face to face with one of the blobs. Pepper Pace is an author of interracial and multicultural romance. But within 10 years, 80% of the world's population would be wiped out. And then they arrived, promising that they meant no harm. For years the world tried to normalize while the silent Motherships hovered. Carmella was still a teen when the Motherships first appeared dotting the skies over the Earth. |