Simon Vance
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Appears on list
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Description
This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about-until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 10.2 - AR Pts: 42
Formats
Description
"In his timeless story of two pairs of mismatched lovers, The Return of the Native sets romantic idealism as a destructive counterpoint to reality and disillusionment." "Against the lowering background of Egdon Heath, fiery Eustacia Vye passes her days, wishing only for passionate love. She believes that her escape from Egdon lies in marriage to Clym Yeobright, home from Paris and discontented with his work there. But Clym wishes to return to the...
Author
Series
Description
Fourth in the Barsetshire Chronicles, FRAMLEY PARSONAGE was published in 1860. In it the values of a Victorian gentleman, the young clergyman Mark Robarts, are put to the test. Like much fiction of 19th century England, FRAMLEY PARSONAGE concerns property, status, family and the conventions. In it Trollope captures the essence of Victorian England. The Barsetshire Chronicles include THE WARDEN, BARCHESTER TOWERS, DOCTOR THORNE, FRAMLEY PARSONAGE,...
Author
Series
Pub. Date
1993
Description
The Riddle of the Sands is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television. The novel "owes a lot to the wonderful adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggard, that were a staple of Victorian Britain". It was a...
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Description
"The classic first novel of the epic Aubrey/Maturin series, widely considered "the best historical novels ever written" (Richard Snow, New York Times). Ardent, gregarious British naval officer Jack Aubrey is elated to be given his first appointment as commander: the fourteen-gun ship HMS Sophie. Meanwhile-after a heated first encounter that nearly comes to a duel-Aubrey and a brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, strike up an...
Author
Pub. Date
2008
Description
This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Since Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to the South Pole in 1910-1912, controversy has raged about the correct interpretation of and explanation for the tragedy. Some writers have drawn a picture of Scott as a bumbling incompetent, whose lack of experience and preparation condemned his men to their deaths. Aspley Cherry-Garrard's account The Worst Journey in the World...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.5 - AR Pts: 22
Formats
Description
"The story opens when an unemployed farmhand, Michael Henchard, sells his wife, Susan, and daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, while in a drunken stupor at a fair, for five guineas to a sailor called Newson. On sobering up the following day, Henchard is filled with remorse, swears a twenty year abstinence from alcohol and begins a search for his family. Eighteen years later the reformed Henchard has become the mayor of Casterbridge, but his past is set to...
88) The spindlers
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.8 - AR Pts: 7
Description
Accompanied by an eccentric, human-sized rat, Liza embarks on a perilous quest through an underground realm to save her brother, Patrick, whose soul has been stolen by the evilest of creatures--the spider-like spindlers.
Author
Pub. Date
[2008]
Description
The brilliance of the Renaissance laid the foundation of the modern world. Textbooks tell us that it came about as a result of a rediscovery of the ideas and ideals of classical Greece and Rome. But now bestselling historian Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that in the year 1434, China--then the world's most technologically advanced civilization--provided the spark that set the European Renaissance ablaze. From that date onward, Europeans...
Author
Series
Temeraire volume 1
Pub. Date
[2006]
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8.1 - AR Pts: 18
Description
When the HMS Reliant captures a French ship and its priceless cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, Captain Will Laurence is swept into an unexpected kinship with an extraordinary creature and joins the elite Aerial Corps as a master of the dragon Temaraire, in which role he must match wits with the powerful dragon-borne forces of Napoleon Bonaparte.
92) The stranger
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2013
Description
Detective Patrik Hedstr�om tackles his toughest investigation yet when a string of suspicious deaths points to a potential serial killer who has turned his eye toward Fjallbacka and her dark forests, where two children vanished decades before.
Author
Series
Vampire chronicles volume 11
Pub. Date
2014.
Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Rice allows (her vampires) to do what they do best: wreak havoc and evoke terror. All while impeccably dressed.” —The Washington PostThe vampire world is in crisis ... Old vampires, roused from deep slumber in the earth, are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn their kin in cities across the globe, from Paris to Mumbai, Hong Kong to San Francisco. Left with little time to spare, a...
95) Under heaven
Author
Series
Under heaven volume 1
Description
Shen Tai, a general serving the Emperor of Kitai, receives 250 Sardian horses, an unthinkable gift fit to overwhelm an emperor, and travels to claim the horses in person.
Author
Series
Charles Hayden novels volume 1
Pub. Date
p2007
Description
His career challenged by a mixed heritage in spite of his loyalty to the king of England, French Revolution-era naval officer Charles Saunders Hayden finds himself aboard an aging frigate that becomes subject to violent crew outbursts and mutiny.
Author
Pub. Date
p2012
Description
"Princess Violet is plain, reckless, and quite possibly too clever for her own good. Particularly when it comes to telling stories. One day she and her best friend, Demetrius, stumble upon a hidden room and find a peculiar book. A forbidden book. It tells a story of an evil being--called the Nybbas--imprisoned in their world. The story cannot be true--not really. But then the whispers start. Violet and Demetrius, along with an ancient, scarred dragon,...
98) Kim
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.7 - AR Pts: 18
Formats
Description
Rudyard Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Born in India and growing into early manhood, Kim is the son of an Irish soldier born under British Imperial rule in 19th century India. Left in the care of a half-caste woman, Kim is free to explore the back allies and bazaars of Lahore. But when he meets with his father's old regiment he trades his native clothes for European suits and abandons his...
Author
Formats
Description
"On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.".
"When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed....
Author
Pub. Date
c1991
Description
Heartfelt, incisive, and timeless, The Confessions of Saint Augustine has captivated readers for more than fifteen hundred years. Retelling the story of his long struggle with faith and ultimate conversion -- the first such spiritual memoir ever recorded -- Saint Augustine traces a story of sin, regret, and redemption that is both deeply personal and, at the same time, universal.
Starting with his early life, education, and youthful indiscretions,...