Karen's Sleepover

Karen's Sleepover

Ann M. Martin

Children's Books / Young Adult

Karen's having her first sleepover ever! She and her friends are going to tell spooky stories, try on makeup, and raid the refrigerator. But then Karen and Nancy get into a big fight. Karen doesn't want Nancy to come to her party. A new girl comes instead, and she is no fun! What will Karen do now?
Read online
  • 908
My Days

My Days

R. K. Narayan

Fiction / Memoir / Humor

In his usual winning, humorous style, R. K. Narayan shares his life story, beginning in his grandmother's garden in Madras with his ferocious pet peacock. As a young boy with no interest in school, he trains grasshoppers, scouts, and generally takes part in life's excitements. Against the advice of all, especially his commanding headmaster father, the dreaming Narayan takes to writing fiction, and one of his pieces is accepted by Punch magazine (his "first prestige publication"). Soon his life includes bumbling British diplomats, curious movie moguls, evasive Indian officials, eccentric journalists, and "the blind urge" to fall in love. R. K. Narayan's larger-than-life perception of the human comedy is at once acute and forgiving, and always true to it.
Read online
  • 902
Brazzaville Beach

Brazzaville Beach

William Boyd

Literature & Fiction

In the heart of a civil war-torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man . . . Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.
Read online
  • 898
The Ruby Knight

The Ruby Knight

David Eddings

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Ehlana, Queen of Elenia, has been poisoned. A deep enchantment sustains her life, but it will end soon. Then Sparhawk, Pandian Knight and the Queen's Champion, learns where to get to cure for the poison. He and his companions set forth on a dangerous quest to find the antidote before the queen should perish and the peace ends....
Read online
  • 893
Tehanu

Tehanu

Ursula K. Le Guin

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Young Adult / Nonfiction

Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins Years ago, they had escaped together from the sinister Tombs of Atuan—she, an isolated young priestess; he, a powerful wizard. Now she is a farmer's widow, having chosen for herself the simple pleasures of an ordinary life. And he is a broken old man, mourning the powers lost to him through no choice of his own. Once, when they were young, they helped each other at a time of darkness and danger and shared an adventure like no other. Now they must join forces again, to help another in need -- the physically and emotionally scarred child whose own destiny has yet to be revealed.
Read online
  • 885
Warhorse

Warhorse

Timothy Zahn

Science Fiction & Fantasy

The Tampy aliens’ living spaceships are far more powerful than humanity’s non-biological technology. Can they—and should they—be tamed? Throughout the universe, space horses are among the most coveted of species. They are starfaring creatures with telekinetic abilities, tamed and controlled by the Tampy aliens—who aren’t willing to share their understanding of the creatures. Despite diplomatic government intervention, human poachers are determined to capture and control the giant beings. With a tenuous peace treaty in place between the Tampy and humans, the first jointly helmed space horse will undertake its first mission. But will the two races be able to work together—or will their peace break down into all-out war?
Read online
  • 879
Switchback

Switchback

Catherine Anderson

Romance / Historical Fiction / Contemporary

A KIDNAPPED CHILD. A DEADLY ENEMY. Bud Mac Phearson's job is to protect Mallory Christiani and her young daughter, Emily--not to get personally involved with either. But after Emily disappears and the trail leads directly to a well-known crime boss, Mac can't refuse the beautiful single mother's pleas for help. With assassins hot on their trail and danger around every corner, the tentative partners race to find the missing key needed for the ransom...even as they try to fight the attraction blooming between them. But when Mac trades his own life for Emily's, Mallory must risk it all to save the man she's come to love...
Read online
  • 877
Dreams of Steel

Dreams of Steel

Glen Cook

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Croaker has fallen and, following the Company's disastrous defeat at Dejagore, Lady is one of the few survivors--determined to avenge the Company and herself against the Shadowmasters, no matter what the cost. But in assembling a new fighting force from the dregs and rabble of Taglios, she finds herself offered help by a mysterious, ancient cult of murder--competent, reliable, and apparently committed to her goals. Meanwhile, far away, Shadowmasters conspire against one another and the world, weaving dark spells that reach into the heart of Taglios. And in a hidden grove, a familiar figure slowly awakens to find himself the captive of an animated, headless corpse. Mercilessly cutting through Taglian intrigues, Lady appears to be growing stronger every day. All that disturbs her are the dreams which afflict her by night--dreams of carnage, of destruction, of universal death, unceasing...
Read online
  • 876
The Difference Engine

The Difference Engine

William Gibson

Science Fiction / Essay

1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines.  Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time.  And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history—and the future: Sybil Gerard—a fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator Edward “Leviathan” Mallory—explorer and paleontologist Laurence Oliphant—diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose.  Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for…. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine is the collaborative masterpiece by two of the most acclaimed science fiction authors writing today.  Provocative, compelling, intensely imagined, it is a startling extension of Gibson’s and Sterling’s unique visions—and the beginning of movement we know today as “steampunk!” From the Paperback edition.
Read online
  • 875
The Live-Forever Machine

The Live-Forever Machine

Kenneth Oppel

Children's Books / Young Adult / Thriller

Past worlds come crashing into the present… Fourteen-year-old Eric witnesses a strange confrontation in the city museum between an aged curator and an eerily intense young man. Without warning, Eric finds himself in the middle of a bitter, centuries-old conflict. Ancient Alexander, guardian of the secret of immortality, only wants to preserve the past. But his nemesis, Coyle, will do anything to destroy it. Within the mysterious museum, and far below it in the city's subterranean depths, Eric becomes the pawn in a life-or-death struggle for control over the Live-Forever Machine.
Read online
  • 865
Baby-Sitters' Island Adventure

Baby-Sitters' Island Adventure

Ann M. Martin

Children's Books / Young Adult

Dawn and Claudia have a perfect day planned. They've invited Dawn's brother and three other kids to join them on a sailing race out to Greenpoint Island. The girls have even packed a picnic lunch for the adventure. But then a big storm blows up in the middle of the race. And Claudia and Dawn and the kids never return from the island. The Baby-sitters can't believe it's true--two of their members are missing!
Read online
  • 857
The Music of Chance

The Music of Chance

Paul Auster

Fiction / Memoir

In a Pennsylvania meadow, a young fireman and an angry gambler are forced to build a wall of fifteenth-century stone. For Jim Nashe, it all started when he came into a small inheritance and left Boston in pusuit of "a life of freedom." Careening back and forth across the United States, waiting for the money to run out, Nashe met Jack Pozzi, a young man with a temper and a plan. With Nashe's last funds, they entered a poker game against two rich eccentrics, "risking everything on the single turn of a card." In Paul Auster's world of fiendish bargains and punitive whims, where chance is a shifting and powerful force, there is redemption, nonetheless, in Nashe's resolute quest for justice and his capacity for love.
Read online
  • 843
234