Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny used to live alone in a boxcar. Now they have a home with their grandfather, and they have started a children’s birthday party planning business. Cakes! Decorations! Party games and favors! The Alden children are having fun helping out the at neighborhood birthday parties. But then, a house is robbed—its hidden safe emptied—while Jessie, Henry, Benny and Violet are downstairs entertaining the young guests! When a second house safe is robbed during one of their parties, the Boxcar Children decide there’s a mystery to be solved. Will they succeed before another safe is emptied—and another birthday ruined? Views: 788
The Book of Proper Names is set in contemporary Paris, its main character an orphan named Plectrude. Before the child's birth her nineteen-year-old mother shoots and kills her nineteen-year-old (and somewhat feckless) father because she hates the names he's devised for their child--she fears they will doom their unborn child to mediocrity. The mother confesses openly to what she has done, and why. She is arrested and thrown into prison, where she gives birth to the child, names her, to everyone's bafflement, Plectrude--an obscure saint, and an albatross of a name--and then hangs herself.
The novel therefore begins on the borderline between tragedy and absurdity, but as Plectrude grows--raised by a loving, indulgent, and eccentric aunt--it becomes a deeply moving and simultaneously chilling portrait of girlhood. Plectrude's great gift turns out to be for ballet, and she throws herself into dance as if her life depended upon it. Few novels have shown us the implacable and unforgiving world of ballet with more intuitive sympathy, yet also with a keen-eyed assessment of the true price of artistic perfection.. Inevitably, the doom hovering over Plectrude's life from birth returns to haunt her, and in the end she learns to survive in the only way she knows how--by committing an act of deadly self-preservation her mother would have perhaps understood best.
The Book of Proper Names is vintage Amelie Nothomb--alternatively mordant and poignant, a portrait of adolescence that is fierce and funny at the same time. There is nothing mediocre either about Nothomb nor her creations. Views: 788
When reporter Alice Stone visits Nancy's school, mysterious things begin to happen to the woman, and Nancy is determined to get to the bottom of the matter. Views: 788
Shade's son Griffin is sucked into an underworld, and Shade must save him before a deadly foe finds him first. Views: 786
Jarrod Thornton is mesmerizing, but Kate Warren doesn't know why.
The moment the new guy walks into the room, Kate senses something strange and intense about him. Something supernatural. Her instincts are proven correct a few minutes later when, bullied by his classmates, Jarrod unknowingly conjures up a freak thunderstorm "inside" their classroom.
Jarrod doesn't believe in the paranormal. When Kate tries to convince him that he has extraordinary powers that need to be harnessed, he only puts up with her "hocus pocus" notions because he finds her captivating. However, the dangerous, uncontrolled strengthening of his gift finally convinces Jarrod that he must take Kate's theories seriously. Together, they embark on a remarkable journey -- one which will unravel the mystery that has haunted Jarrod's family for generations and pit the teens against immense forces in a battle to undo the past and reshape the future. Views: 784
*"I look up now into the oval mirror and see barely a trace of the mud-splattered girl tearing through the woodland on her horse, or the barefoot girl wading at Schonbrunn... I have become what Mama set out for me to be. Majestic. A Dauphine and eventually a Queen." *
So writes the headstrong 13-year-old Maria Antonia--future Queen of France--in her diary on October 23, 1769. In this engrossing addition to the Royal Diaries series (Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor, Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile), Kathryn Lasky invents a diary of the young Marie Antoinette in 1769--the year she is to be married off to Dauphin Louis Auguste, eldest grandson of the French king Louis XV. Arranged marriages were common in that day and age--as the Empress Theresa (of the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nations) sought to consolidate power among nations by marrying off her children. Thus, the future of Austria and France falls upon Maria Antonia's young shoulders.
To prepare her for this awesome responsibility, she must be trained to write, read, speak French, dress, act... even breathe. Things get even more grim as she is shipped off to the court of Versailles and introduced to her puffy, awkward future husband and confronted with the court's ridiculous customs. Marie--an opinionated and insightful young woman--mocks the court of "impeccable etiquette and manners" that makes up nasty rhymes about those they hate, but panics when her hair is mussed. Lasky has done an excellent job of creating a very human character in the young Marie Antoinette--one whom young readers will want to learn more about. Fortunately, her story is given plenty of context with an epilogue describing the history of the young Queen after 1769, a historical note offering an 18th-century context, a Habsburg-Bourbon family tree, and various portraits of the royal family. (Ages 9 to 13) --Karin Snelson Views: 783
Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park, it is a virtual city-state in itself, built for the most elite high-tech industries. Isolated and secure, the residents lack nothing, yet one day, a doctor at the clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and her husband Paul uncovers the dangerous psychological vents that maintain Eden-Olympia's smoothly-running surface. Views: 782
From the author of SOPHIE'S WORLD, 'A masterful mixture of fantasy and reality...a simply wonderful read' SHE.
Panina Manina, a trapeze artist, falls and breaks her neck. As the ringmaster bends over her, he notices an amulet of amber around her neck, the same trinket he had given his own lost child, who was swept away in a torrent some sixteen years earlier.
This tale is narrated by Petter, a precocious child and fantasist, and perhaps Jostein Gaarder's most intriguing character since Sophie. As an adult, Petter makes his living selling stories and ideas to professionals suffering from writer's block. But as Petter sits spinning his tales, he finds himself in a trap of his own making. Views: 782
Despite her best intentions, Jilly finds herself drawn to Coltrane, her father's new right-hand aide, a handsome liar with his own vengeful agenda against a man whom he blames for a crime committed many years before. Original. Views: 780
There is a place that shouldn’t exist. But does. And there are creatures that shouldn’t exist. But do. Welcome to a land where all of your dreams and nightmares are very real—and often deadly. Welcome to Everworld.
Senna. The one and only reason David, Christopher, April and Jalil find themselves in a place that is magical and terrifying and wonderful all at once. Senna is also the reason they can’t get back to their own world. It seems she only shows up when she wants to be found. And she always disappears.
At the moment, Senna is the least of their problems. Now they have to make a choice: Outsmart the dragon that killed Galahad—or die. And the odds of David and the others surviving by themselves aren’t very good. But they’ve met some Everworld residents that might be willing to help for a price: Senna. Views: 778
Fleet officer Heris Serrano came from a family of Fleet officers, so when a lying superior forced her to resign, life lost all meaning. To pay the bills, she became Captain of a rich old lady's interstellar luxury yacht, adding insult to injury. But Cecelia, the rich old lady, had more brains than most admirals Heris had known, and before it was all over, Heris would have a chance to rejoin her beloved space navy -- if she could manage to stop an invading armada. Views: 778
Gertrude and Claudius are the “villains” of Hamlet: he the killer of Hamlet’s father and usurper of the Danish throne, she his lusty consort, who marries Claudius before her late husband’s body is cold. But in this imaginative “prequel” to the play, John Updike makes a case for the royal couple that Shakespeare only hinted at. Gertrude and Claudius are seen afresh against a background of fond intentions and family dysfunction, on a stage darkened by the ominous shadow of a sullen, erratic, disaffected prince. “I hoped to keep the texture light,” Updike said of this novel, “to move from the mists of Scandinavian legend into the daylight atmosphere of the Globe. I sought to narrate the romance that preceded the tragedy.” Views: 776
THE BAD GIRLS ARE BACK!
NOW THAT THEY'RE IN SEVENTH GRADE, Mikey and Margalo decide it's time to be popular -- or at least, time to be less unpopular. The trouble is, typical, normal kids are what work in junior high, and if there's one thing Mikey and Margalo aren't, it's typical and normal.
Mikey's first attempt to crack seventh grade society ends, predictably, in disaster, but, undaunted, the friends persevere. They've got the will, they've got the smarts, and most importantly, they've got each other. What chance does junior high have against the Bad Girls? Views: 767
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Elizabeth Berg's Once Upon a Time, There Was You.
In this superb novel by the beloved author of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart.
Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember—and reclaim—the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage.
Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself. Views: 763
**From bestselling author and international sensation Paulo Coelho, a novel set in a small village about a young, poor barmaid whose wager with the devil leads to a spiritual transformation.**
A stranger arrives at the remote village of Viscos, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: Are human beings, in essence, good or evil? In welcoming the mysterious foreigner, the whole village becomes an accomplice to his sophisticated plot, which will forever mark their lives.
A novel of temptation, *The Devil and Miss Prym *is a thought-provoking parable of a community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear—as it struggles with the choice between good and evil. Views: 761
