"Mother died at 8:58"So begins this story of seven extraordinary children who, faced with the unknown terrors of an orphanage, decide not to report their mother's death. They bury her in the garden, telling people only that she's too sick to have visitors.Then a menacing stranger appears, claiming to be their father. He agrees to keep their secret-and from that moment the story moves relentlessly to its mesmerizing climax. Views: 55
Sixteen-year-old Canny Mochrie's parents go away on a vacation, so they send her off on a trip of her own with her step-brother Sholto and his opinionated girlfriend Susan, who are interviewing the survivors of a strange coal mine disaster and researching local folklore in 1959 Southland, New Zealand. Canny is left to herself to wander in a mysterious and enchanting nearby valley, occupied almost entirely by children who all have the last name Zarene and can perform a special type of magic that tells things how to be stronger and better than they already are. With the help of a seventeen-year-old boy who is held hostage in a hidden away house by a spell that is now more powerful than the people who first placed it, Canny figures out why she, too, can use this special magic that only Zarenes should know, and where she really came from. Printz Honor author Elizabeth Knox has created another stunning world world of intrigue in Mortal Fire. Views: 53
Jordan Maddox has so disciplined his own emotions that he has, in reality, little contact with life: indifferent, he no longer responds to the signs of love-even of desperation- from those who are close to him.Suddenly he finds himself accused of murder.At first he reacts calmly. It seems to him an absurd, almost an amusing, mistake. To his Wife, his friends, his very lack of passion is proof of his innocence. But to the police, Maddox is the guilty man. At their hands he is relentlessly stripped of his invulnerability.Imprisoned, alone, ignoring the insistent demands of his own defense, he sets out to find his way back to life. In the memories of his childhood and in the act of death and violence of which he stands accused, Maddox submits himself to a far more crucial, far more agonizing trial than the one in which he appears every day as the defendant. For his real trial is that of a man attempting, for the first time, perhaps too late, to accept the... Views: 52
North East India, 1923. On the broiling Night Mail from Calcutta to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target? Jim should have known that his secondment to the East Indian Railway, with a roving brief to inspect security arrangements, would not be the working holiday he had hoped for. The country seethes with political and racial tension. Aside from the Jamalpur shooting, someone is placing venomous snakes - including giant king cobras - in the first class compartments of the railway.Jim also has worries on the home front: his daughter has formed a connection with a Maharajah's son, who may in turn have a connection to Jim's incredibly rude colleague, the bristling Major Fisher. Jim must do everything he can to keep his family safe from harm, as he unravels the intrigues that surround him... Views: 52
