B&N Community

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.

riverrun on a riverraft past Jackson's Island and Cairo and farther south down round curve of ess and bend of pee into the Mississippi floodplain and environs. Meeting up then again finally a dukesaying Bilgewater waterhaired a wearworn and heir to pap's noble berth and the regal Dauphin Louis Louis, little Louis lost yet many Louis lost by griftdrifting wanderers southasleep in a Kentucky dream the mishestench of distillillery from fetid headholes venting northward agrand wafting like pap's old stink. A sho wan help thee men Huck they sho use aw help. Thick flubberylubberyrubbery lips expel a brokarken dialectical dialect a language inbornown betraying some inspark of humanity through the charcoal golem lurching forward, slooped, slumped, tarred and wanntana rayust and the exhaustion and indignation flaring in dead cow eyes. Old Testament hullaballoo haven and every man firing and brimstoning every other man a new testament heeizz judgmant cometh and that right soon with the gavelsmash selling men blockwise blackwise I reckon a bada sold he lookin like he baga sold he do mighty fine work badadada slamrap wood on wood flesh stripped ripe for picking and Jim sayin he done seen some thangs what made him powerful furious beasttempered den and hey yall what you lookin at **bleep** what you starin at boy niggerboy dey deedsignin away muh kin in dere Sunday best and me blackdack eyes up at heaven say where the host runoft to?

But old HuCkE done see all the neighsayers caint be troothsayers even though ol Jefferson heself plant a garden with others black hands and he can see the hands soilcovered sweat and sunslight, a rocking chair on the porch squeakcreak slurp of tea and grayhaired indignant penman. But four fathers and countrybuilders and laborforces ain't got no right And since this hallowed way of life so long but not right not Jim niggerboy but pa done say and all them people say thisuh one be Missuhs Watsons properteh thisuh one with the strong build and meek puppy eyes harangutaned and marked in mind in body property belonging but never belonging and unable to discern white from wrong. Four men held in her swarms, the gushing Miss Isipee, winding her way cross court and country freely flowing down from sea to sea, carrying on her two men, a king in permanent interregnum, the bilgewater Duke of Griftin, the animalman a hootin hollerin the troublesome boy once dead back from heck risen to freedeem on a little raft a way a lone a last a loved a long the

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.

Kate refuses to marry Petruchio, the suitor her father has chosen for her. Wanting to escape the tauntings of her sister Bianca, she runs away to the city and hires herself out as governess to the wards of an intriguing bachelor who keeps the children at his country estate and does not want to be bothered by them. What happens next is anybody's guess.

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.

Haines, sitting on a low chair by the table, is trying to take the lid off a tea kettle. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests tries again.
As before.
Enter Mulligan bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a smaller mirror lay crossed.

Mulligan: (lifting the bowl aloft) Introibo ad...
silence
Haines: What?
Mulligan: I forgot.
Haines: Okay. Would you like some tea?
Mulligan: We can't.
Haines: Why not?
Mulligan: We're waiting for Dedalus. (lathers his face) Come down, Kinch. Come down, you fearful jesuit.
Haines: Who's Kinch?
Mulligan: Dedalus. (pause) I think.
Haines: You think?
Mulligan: How else would I know to call him a jesuit.
Haines: So, Dedalus is a jesuit?
Mulligan: (confidently) Yes. (looks into the larger mirror as he scrapes the lather off his face with the smaller mirror)
Haines: Why the Greek name?
Mulligan: I may be mistaken. Let's stop talking for a minute, do you mind. (pauses for a few seconds) Haines, open that door, will you?
Haines: I had a dream.
Mulligan: Don't tell me!
Haines: I dreamt of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Sea--
Mulligan: DON'T TE-- who?
Haines: I don't know.
Enter Mrs Cahill and Lucky. Mrs Cahill drives Lucky with a rope passed around his neck, so Lucky is the first to enter. Lucky carries many jugs of milk

Mulligan: In nomine Patris et Filii et Patris...
Mrs Cahill at the sight of Mulligan and Haines stops short. The rope tautens. Mrs Cahill jerks at it violently.

Mrs Cahill: Back!
Noise of Lucky falling breaking all the milk bottles.

Mulligan: I wanted Sandycove milk for my tea.
Haines: We can drink it black.
Mulligan: Damn you and your Paris fads, I want Sandycove milk.
Haines tries to pour some tea, but the kettle is empty

Haines: Nothing to be done.
Mulligan: Well? Shall we eat breakfast without Dedalus?
Haines: Yes, let's.
They don't eat

8:44 A.M. A full scale military invasion by foreign troops begins. Total surprise. Almost total success. A gang of high school kids become the last line of defense. 

 

Edward Cullen, as played by Patrick Swayze, and Bella Swan (Lea Thompson) are honeymooning on an island off the coast of Brazil when Soviet and Cuban Volturi invade. Mistakenly thinking it's a cross between a vampire and werewolf, they label themselves Wolverines, and Edward, Bella, Jacob (C. Thomas Howell), Seth (Charlie Sheen), and Leah (Jennifer Grey) head off into the hills to fight the communist threat.

You wake up in Unknown Kadath.

I am on a boat. I am still on a boat. Every morning I wake up and I see nothing because I have no eyes. I don't need to see. The waves tell me enough. Not there yet. A sailor blasphemes crudely, and the others laugh. If only they knew. If only they had seen what I have seen. I have no eyes but I must scream. I am Jack's undulating tentacle. 

 

You wake up at R'lyeh.

 

The bottom of the ocean is spread out before me. The non-euclidian geometry of the structures fills me with an existential angst like paint stripper. The tentacles in my eye-sockets quiver in anticipation. Daddy, I'm home. In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. Before me looms the tomb of a star vampire, having lain dormant here for aeons. It is awake now. They are all awake now. I take a step forwards. My mind takes a step back. Slide. The dreamer dreams no longer. I use my tentacles to pry open the vault and step inside. The star vampire assaults my psyche with a barrage of ethereal screams. 

 

"I want you to punch me as hard as you can."

 

"EEAAAAEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIGHHHHUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

 

When the stars are right, I cock back my fist and punch him in the cloaca. 

 

"EEUUUUUGHHHowwwwmmmmm..."

 

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops to zero. 

 

 

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.

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.

Eddie "Chase" Molloy was on his way to Atlantis, he thought, when the chain fell off his bicycle and he crashed into the side of a building. Perhaps he had once again been sabotaged by his Soup Line rival, the wily Giovanni Qobras, haberdasher and displayer of the town's finest coat spoons, if you believed what he himself, Giovanni that is, said, which Molloy didn't, or not entirely, or didn't want to. After picking himself off the ground, unsure if he maintained consciousness, Molloy went about assorting the items in his pockets, making sure that he didn't lose anything more than he normally would, if this accident hadn't of happened, though it did of course, at least that's what his throbbing joints were telling him. Ah yes, the map to Atlantis. It was more of a general guide, really, and he wasn't sure what Atlantis was or why he needed to go there and in fact from his other pocket he produced a grocery list making it equally likely that he was on his way to Food Lion, and when a third pocket produced a Library card, he had no choice but to admit that his destination was clearly in question. However, from his fourth pocket he produced the Hallowed Cross Fragment of Longinus, supposedly a fragment from the actual cross on which we quickly sacrificed our Lord and savior, so he could etc. etc. This had something to do with Atlantis, Molloy thought, and perhaps Giovanni really wanted to get it back, seeing as how it might have been his to begin with. But who could say for sure. In fact, as an agnostic, he scarcely believed in the Fragment, much less its origin, though the welt on his abdomen from where it had been jammed against his side offered fairly convincing evidence of both the material existence of the fragment and the nature of the world as in need of redemption.

Set on one day in 1995, Cluelysses follows the peregrinations of Tai, the high school nerd, and her counterpart, the priveledged rich girl Cher, around Beverly Hills. Using an innovative interior monologue and an ingeniously intricate doubling that mirrors the voyages of Odysseus, Joyce captures the sum total of human experience. From Dionne's closing soliloquy: "I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will...As if"

Saint Crispin's Eve, 1415, Henry Ironomenclature wearing shiny armor, regal cape, iron greaves and visored helmet, happened to be waiting on the battlefield of Agincourt. A conspiracy was afoot, tremoring through the tendril veins of the mass collective of bodies currently supine under the stars. But that goddamn battle minstrel was still stirring a racket.

Eat and drink you muddy dogs
For tomorrow we might die
But don't forget to tip your waitress
In case this ain't goodbye

Bloodlush York, the son of an exiled horseshoer, once in the stockades, passed Henry a flask of wine.

"Wha?" said Henry who had wondered how he was going to get out of this one.

"What the hell, I figure, anyway, we've sailed from one shore to the next and maybe we'll kill a few more people or maybe they'll kill us but you know I saw this guy with a leek in his hat and honestly I don't even care anymore as long he at least get dismembered tomorrow. A leek, like yeah that's your bastion of identity. Stupid **bleep**."

Henry looked in puzzlement as the drunken York rambled on. He felt himself apart from the battle, separate from the rest. Only he knew the extent of the conspiracy and had only agreed to this hare-brained war in order to uncover its hidden truth. He knew France had been in league with an illuminati organization under the leadership of the Mystic Sultanate, Abin Ovarth Inkenitt. Together, with the cooperation of the United Merchants Guild, they established what he knew was fast becoming a perpetual war state in which all those involved got rich, and fast, and were too far away to see the death throes of those paying the price. The signs were everywhere. Two swords left in the ground coming to a point, forming the unmistakable signature of the Discreet, Evil and Various Illuminati Locus, the theosophic V., a source of power to all those trained in the mysteries.

                                          THE            INSIDE          SCOOP

 

• Recently, your roving gossip reporter has noticed that the Incredible Hulk has been absent from the social scene.  

 

• Dr. Bruce Banner was spotted at an anger-management seminar given by Dr. Phil.

 

• Elizabeth Bennett says computer dating match ups are worth a try.

 

• Renowned detective Adrian Monk has refused to consult with famed detective Nero Wolfe who prefers not to leave his premises. Insiders have confirmed that Mr. Monk is appalled  by Archie's sloppy sandwiches . He also does not care for the assymetrical appearance of Mr. Wolfe's famed orchids.

 

• Sam-I-Am, the roving restaurant critic, has started offering more varied food choices to his readers.

 

• The Three Bears have recently moved to an exclusive gated community'

 

Stay tuned., You never know where your roving reporter may be lurking!

 

 

 

             

Now, I need not tell the faithful Reader of my works how many times my faithful Friend and steadfast Butler Jeeves, a Chosen man in any concievable sense, has saved my Preterite hide in one sticky situation or another.  But allow me if you will to examine the one such incidence for which I am perhaps the most unspeakably grateful for his seemingly divine intervention - a matter which went beyond petty trifles such as life and Death.

It was just a nice dinner at first, or at least as nice as they get during War times, and I was having a halfway pleasant shore leave, excepting certain incidents you may recall involving, among other things, giant octopi and beguiling temptresses on the beach.  These are however other stories, and during this one I was just attempting to sit down and have a nice spot of port over my evening meal. The conversation, however, started taking a slightly unsettling turn over the course of our dinner towards, of all things, Rockets.  Now don't get me wrong, I've nothing against a nice long-range explosive projectile now and again, but over the course of this stay I'd heard quite enough of the valves and propellents and what-have-you and I was starting to get a small bit piqued. When one hears such talk in London, for example, it seems par for the course, the city being a veritable missile magnet, but on shore leave one usually prefers and expects a more relaxed subject, more along the lines of mixed drinks or cigarette brands. One Mr. Bloat struck me as particularly interested in this topic, however, and kept returning specifically to the innovation of the German V-2. Aside from a general exhaustion on the subject I was a bit troubled by a personal reaction I seemed to have to this specific piece of equipment, something my psychoanalyst friends would certainly have a ball with and which would be a real reputation-ruiner if word got out, but which the Reader of the less delicate sex may understand better when he considers his own attachments to certain items of no inherent allure.

The old Wooster nerves were getting progressively more stressed over the course of the evening and my steadfast Jeeves must have noticed, because at one point came a subtle cough from a corner of the room which seemed to have sprung up as suddenly as the man who now inhabited it. I would know Jeeves's subtle coughs anywhere, and I grasped immediately that my Salvation was on the way.

'Do excuse the interruption, sir, but do you perchance remember the game we played with Aunt Agatha and the other guests at Bimsly manner during our last stay?'

I got the trick of it immediately. Wanting to cry out, 'Jeeves, you're a genius!' I instead opted for the old Wooster subterfuge, telling him loudly what a wonderful memory that was and how much fun it would be to play with this fine group around the table.  Soon we had the requisite champagne, the waiters were on alert to refill any empty glasses, and the festivities could begin.

I introduced then the concept of the night's entertainment, a traditional Wooster family drinking game (so I said) which involved accusing others by name of having stolen some trifle from a certain royal personage and then the next in line denying the accusation in turn. As it was so prosaically explained to me by an American colleague, 'You mess up, you drink up.'

We being military type chappies, it didn't take long for this to become quite the little competition. Within the hour we were through fifteen bottles of the House's finest and I, having been somewhat more reserved in my play, slipped unnoticed out the back door with Jeeves following tight but silent behind, a nice new suit awaiting him as soon as we got to a place where we could buy one.

Velveteen Rabbit, Run

 

This treasured child psychologist classic has been used for decades to help children deal with issues of loss and abandonment.  The story features a protagonist who flees his wife and child in order to find himself only to discover the truth from a stuffed horse: “Real isn't how you are made.  It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”   This boardbook comes with a rich tactile cover that your child will be desperate to hug for years to come.

 

Princess BridesHead Revisited

 

This is a timeless adventurous fairy tale of a decadent 1920’s Englishman, CharlesRyder and his fickle infatuations with members of the Marchmain family. Initiallyattracted to Sebastian, he eventually allows himself to be seduced by the sophisticated Buttercup, the most beautiful woman on earth.

 

In turn he is drawn toother members of this terrifying assortment of family members: a gentle giant,a swordsman, an evil Sicilian, and a sadistic Count. A universal story thatwill appear to readers of all persuasions.

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. . . .