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Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two self-proclaimed New York City shopaholics – Ally and Erica – fall from the sky and miraculously wash up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach clutching their credit cards. Through a series of surreal metamorphoses, dreams and revelations, they find enlightenment in a small shop selling designer handbags.

The neighborhood is no place for the innocent, the young, the defenseless or the pure. This is a territory of broken families, bitter cops, whacked out ex-cons, and a mother who watches herself on the nightly news as her missing child floats further and further into the unkown. When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter.  Boston private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, don't want this case. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself. But after pleas from the child's aunt, they embark upon an investigation and ultimately risk losing everything- their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives-to find this little-girl-lost. Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power.  With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds.

 

Capturing the voices that echo within blue collar Boston, Dennis Christopher Lehane-Paolini is a master storyteller, who weaves together embittered people, tattered emotions, and brutal crime to create relentless, heart-pounding novels of suspense. Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? Gritty and evocative, the novels of Dennis Christopher Lehane-Paolini are ones you will never forget.

As the Second World War encroaches on the Moscow suburbs, four children are sent out into the countryside to stay with an old family friend so that they are safe from the attacking Germans. As they settle into their new home, a visiting aparatchik catches the youngest of the four children reading bourgeois literature and after a brief show trial she is taken away to a labor camp where she manufactures ball bearings for T-34 tanks. Being a 6 year old child used to a comfortable life she is unfit for the brutalities of the labor camp and soon slips into a delusional fantasy world - complete with fauns, witches, and a giant talking lion - which she has constructed as a coping mechanism.   Meanwhile her siblings go without food for three weeks in order to save a stash of ruples with which they hope to bribe the correct officials and get her released from the camp.  Unfortunately the amount does not suffice and so they too are sentenced to hard labor after being charged with bribery.  Upon being reunited with their younger sibling they are at first shocked at her delusional state and attempt to bring her out of it.  But as hard the realities of the camp settle in they too succumb to delusion and so too begin to see themselves living in this fantasy realm, engaging in an epic conflict of good and evil  - obviously influenced by the corrupt Tsarist folktales they had been fed as infants - defeating a wicked witch and emerging victorious as Kings and Queens, living happily ever after in their delusional fantasy world as their bodies succumb to fatigue and malnourishment.

In a great, green room

there was a vampire

And a red balloon

And a picture of --

 

A werewolf howling at the moon.

 

Goodnight Room

Goodnight New Moon.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met the rented Toyota, driven with such impatient exuberance by The Senator, speeding along the unpaved unnamed road, taking the turns in giddy skidding slides, and then the car had gone off the road and had overturned in black rushing water, listing to its passenger's side, rapidly sinking.
     Am I going to die?—like this?
     O, the wild rose blossoms
     On the little green place.

His father told him that story; his father looked at him through a glass; he had a hairy face. His face was hairy to hide his identity, because a nicens little boy saw him drag the body down the road where Betty Byrne lived; she sold lemon platt. He buried the body there.

Saigon, sh*t. I’m still only in Saigon. Every time I think I’m going to wake up back in that vulture-eyed old man’s room. When I was home, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing but the sound of a heart beating…

 

When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the old man’s room.

 

I’ve been here a week now. Waiting for that heart beat, getting louder. Every minute I stay in this room it gets louder.

 

And every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger. Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter.

 

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a heart beat, and for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service.

Ashley Mole and Rat Butler sit on the verandah of Toad Hall enjoying a mint julep. . . .

The queen of nursery rhymes takes on R.L. Stine.  Here’s one example:

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
Each wife had seven flies,
Each fly had seven eyes,
Each eye had seven warts.
Flies, eyes, warts and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?

 

            Impoverished bookseller/biographer Margaret Lea is shipwrecked on Lake Windermere, en route to visit reclusive author Viola Winter, and washes up on the shores of Illyria, the Duke Orsino’s Yorkshire estate.  The Duke, his brain and vision addled by absinthe, is convinced Margaret is his long-lost son, Cesario.  Viola Winter, addled by senility, is equally convinced Margaret is her estranged daughter, Olivia.

            With visions of inheritances dancing in her head, Margaret attempts to play both parts for both potential benefactors. The pot is sweetened even more when the Daily Mail offers her a tidy sum for revealing the secrets of her rich and famous would-be parents, but the payoff is dependent on her meeting a deadline that is just twelve days – and thirteen nights –away.

Can I ask you something, Dean? Sal said.

 

Yes.

 

Are we Beat?

 

Sometimes. Not now.

 

And we're still going west.

 

Dig it.

 

So we'll be hip.

 

Dig.

 

Dig what?

 

Nothing. Just dig.

 

Okay.

 

I'm going to blow out this reefer stick. Is that okay?

 

Yes. That's okay.

 

Many years later, as he faced the media, Joe Torre was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover baseball. At that time the Bronx was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of the Hudson river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.

Dr. Spenser and Mr. Hawk solve crimes in downtown Boston while attempting to control their own inner demons.

 

Though never actually seen together, Spenser and Hawk are reported to be two separate people, but are they? 

 

Susan Silverman, Spenser's love interest and a lawyer by trade, has become wary of her beau. His violent outbursts are becoming more frequent and who is this Mr. Hawk character he keeps talking about? 

 

 When Mr. Hawk is accused of trampling a small girl, it's up to Spenser and Silverman to solve this convoluted crime. How will this one play out?

Captain Jack Aubrey, accused of fathering a child out of wedlock, is relieved of his command. Stephen Maturin, doctor and spy, returns to England after a two year separation from Aubrey.

 

Will Aubrey reveal the mother of his child?

 

Can Maturin have his friend's command reinstated?

 

And why is Aubrey wearing that ridiculously large "A" on his pantaloons?