Barbara Park--Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed
Title: Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed Author: Barbara Park File Type: Mobi Subject:Children's Books Description:From School Library JournalGrade 2-3?Junie's kindergarten classmates convince her that an invisible monster lives under her bed. Her parents and grandmother are unable to convince her otherwise until Junie hits upon the idea of putting her unflattering school picture under the bed to frighten the monster. In Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook, the little girl discovers that finders keepers losers weepers is not an appealing philosophy when she loses the special gloves her grandfather gave her and the child who finds them doesn't take them to the lost and found. Junie's first-person narration is sprinkled with deliberate grammatical errors and misunderstood word usage in an attempt to show a five-year-old's viewpoint (I runned home, They got stoled on purpose.). Precocious use of sophisticated language is also used to achieve an intended humorous effect. The black-and-white, full- and half-page illustrations reflect Junie's cockeyed view of the world and will help attract beginning chapter-book readers. The issues the child is dealing with are right on target for the intended age group, but Junie's personality is more annoying than endearing and the humor lacks freshness and spontaneity. Buy where the series is popular.?Lisa Smith, Lindenhurst Memorial Library, NYbr 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. ReviewPark is truly a funny writer. Although Junie B. is a kindergartner, she's sure to make middle graders laugh out loud. -- School Library Journal -- Review
Title: The Glass Key
Author: Dashiell Hammett
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Mystery
Description:ReviewHammett's prose was clean and entirely unique. His characters were as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction. His gift of invention never tempted him beyond the limits of credibility. -- The New York Times Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett's tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness. A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel. This classic Hammet work of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.
Title: The Silent Sea
Author: Clive Cussler
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Thriller
Description:FromThe seventh Oregon Files adventure thriller begins on December 7, 1941, when five boys encounter tragedy while looking for buried pirate treasure on a small island off the coast of Washington State. Flash-forward to today: Juan Cabrillo, captain of the Oregon (a high-tech vessel posing as a tramp freighter), is in Argentina, trying to recover a downed NASA satellite. Well, don’t you know, Juan stumbles on something he totally didn’t expect to find, and soon he’s chasing after the secrets of an ancient curse that might still be causing trouble. Fast-paced and a lot of fun, the latest Cabrillo novel delivers the wallop Cussler’s fans have come to expect. Cabrillo himself—he shares his name with a sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer, by the way—makes a fine protagonist, sharp-witted and two-fisted. Considering the Oregon Files novels involve action, exploration, and high-tech gadgetry, it’s surprising no one has turned them into movies yet. The prolific Cussler, who, like James Patterson, now employs coauthors (Du Brul in this case), is often accused of writing by the numbers, but this time those numbers add up to entertaining fare for high-adventure fans. --David Pitt An ancient curse... br A prize beyond imagination... br Juan Cabrillo will face one to win the other.
Title: Artemis Fowl_ The Time Paradox
Author: Eoin Colfer
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Young Adult
Description:
Artemis's mother has contracted a deadly disease--and the only cure lies in the brain fluid of African lemurs. Unfortunately, Artemis himself was responsible for making the lemurs extinct five years ago. Now he must enlist the aid of his fairy friends to travel back in time and save the lemur. Not only that, but he must face his deadliest foe yet: his younger self.
Title: Dracula_ The Un-Dead
Author: Dacre Stoker
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Horror
Description:
The official sequel to Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, written by his direct descendent and endorsed by the Stoker familyThe story begins in 1912, twenty-five years after the events described in the original novel. Dr. Jack Seward, now a disgraced morphine addict, hunts vampires across Europe with the help of a mysterious benefactor. Meanwhile, Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina, leaves law school to pursue a career in stage at London's famous Lyceum Theatre.The production of Dracula at the Lyceum, directed and produced by Bram Stoker, has recently lost its star. Luckily, Quincey knows how to contact the famed Hungarian actor Basarab, who agrees to take the lead role.Quincey soon discovers that the play features his parents and their former friends as characters, and seems to reveal much about the terrible secrets he's always suspected them of harbouring. But, before he can confront them, Jonathan Harker is found murdered.The writers were able to access Bram Stoker's hand-written notes and have included in their story characters and plot threads that had been excised by the publisher from the original printing over a century ago.Dracula is one of the most recognized fictional characters in the world, having spawned dozens of multi-media spin-offs. The Un-Dead is the first Dracula story to enjoy the full support of the Stoker estate since the original 1931 movie starring Bela Lugosi.
Title: Cutting for Stone
Author: Abraham Verghese
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction
Description:Amazon.com ReviewstrongAmazon Exclusive: John Irving Reviews Cutting for Stonestrong strongCutting for Stone:strong That Cutting for Stone is a remarkable achievement._--John Irving_(Photo Maki Galimberti)hr From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Lauded for his sensitive memoir (_My Own Country_) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brothers long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Vergheses weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel. (Feb.) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Title: Gods Go Begging
Author: Alfredo Vea
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Historical
Description:Amazon.com ReviewOne could argue that the war novel is an essentially timeless genre. Weapons are subject to long and increasingly lethal refinement--but from Gods Go Begging, is a remarkable work. Vea begins his story in present-day San Francisco. The protagonist, Jesse Pasadoble, is a former Army sergeant who's now made a name for himself as a criminal defense attorney. Haunted by wartime memories, Pasadoble has found a way to channel his anguish: his impoverished clients remind him of his suffering comrades, and he seeks a compensatory justice for what he and his platoon lost. blockquoteJesse hated death. He did not fear it, but he hated it with all of his heart and soul. A year and a half of incredible fear in the highlands of Vietnam had been transformed into an almost anguished love the living, intact moment, the moment that can never be possessed. Like many of the men who have witnessed the best and worst in themselves, who have been given a glimpse of the end of their lives at a very young age, he had lost the power to be lonely. The power had been replaced by something else: a soul sickness; a hunger for beauty, but only at a distance. Though he could not love his own life and the things within it, Jesse hated death. blockquoteHis newest client is a 12-year-old boy, a child of the projects who's been charged with the brutal murder of two women. As the case unfolds, the barriers between past and present, America and Vietnam, erode and finally disappear. Meanwhile, Vea expertly marries the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez to his visceral accounts of battle. Indeed, whether we measure by the breadth of his imagination, the strength of his characters, or the hallucinatory power of his prose, there seems to be no novelistic terrain that Vea can't conquer. A chronicle of defeat and suffering, Gods Go Begging represents a paradoxical victory for the author--and, of course, for the reader. --Ted LeventhalFrom Publishers WeeklyMexican-American author and Vietnam vet V?a's third novel (after La Maravilla) is a gritty, dark, and tightly wrapped tale of mystery, desire, hopelessness and death. A shocking double homicide; the nagging torment of Vietnam War flashbacks; a string of oddball, lowlife and scumbag clients; and his own tequila-clouded life make practicing law a daily ordeal for San Francisco defense attorney Jesse Pasadoble. And now dead soldier comrades and a crazy army chaplain from Jesse's Vietnam past have come back to both haunt and guide him as he struggles with his own demons and despair. Jesse is a cynical lawyer who believes an honest victim is as rare as an honest defendant. When the two female owners of the Amazon Luncheonette are gunned down on the street, Jesse is tapped to defend the primary suspect, a scared and nearly illiterate local gangbanger called Bisquit Boy. The search leads him first to the culture of San Francisco's housing projects, then to the Vietnamese mob and, in an intensity of painful memories, through his own past. V?a's third-person narration alternates between the present-day plot and Jesse's war experience; chapters flash back to the Asian jungle and the men Jesse fought alongside, among them the mysterious chaplain who holds the key to current events. Jesse's anguish actually heightens his awareness and allows him to finally unravel a Gordian knot of bizarre relationships, which not only brings justice for the victims, but a measure of peace to his own soul as well. V?a composes his plot with great skill, leaving the reader strongly convinced of his story's credibility. (Aug.) br 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.