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  • Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
    Af Jane Austen (2004)
    Summary: Jane Austen's debut novel is a brilliant tragicomedy of flirtation and folly in which two sisters who represent "sense" and "sensibility," or restraint and emotionalism, experience love and heartbreak in their own separate ways. One daughter, the impetuous Marianne, falls passionately in love with the dashing John Willoughby and makes no secret of her affections. Meanwhile, Elinor and the mild-mannered Edward Ferras feel a mutual attraction, yet neither has the directness to acknowledge it. When it is revealed that Willoughby is in fact an unscrupulous fortune hunter and that Edward is bound by a previous commitment to another woman, each sister's romantic hopes are dashed. As they bear their grief in their different ways, Marianne learns from Elinor's quiet restraint, while Elinor learns the value of Marianne's candid expression. In the end, both sisters are happily settled, having each developed a more balanced approach to life and love

  • Howard Pyle: Men of Iron
    Lydbog (net):

    Men of Iron

    Af Howard Pyle (2004)
    Summary: In the days of chivalry, when men were made of iron, young Myles Falworth, a lord's son, is forced to make his own fortune when his father is unjustly disgraced for treason. How he enters the service of a powerful lord, rises to knighthood, defeats his father's old enemy in thrilling combat, and at last wins the friendship of the king is told against the background of the dangerous times of fourteenth-century England. Master storyteller Howard Pyle is at his best, incorporating fascinating historical information about medieval life into this fast-moving and entertaining story of a boy's fight to restore his family's rights and good name. This classic story remains a favorite not only among young readers but also among educators because of the author's effortless way of teaching virtues such as courage, loyalty, steadfastness, and generosity

  • Louise Erdrich: The Master Butchers Singing Club
    Af Louise Erdrich (2004)
    Summary: What happens when a trained killer discovers, in the aftermath of war, that his true vocation is love? Having survived the killing fields of World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns home to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious set of knives, Fidelis sets out for America, getting as far as Argus, North Dakota, where he settles, building a business and a home for his family - which now includes Eva and four sons - and a singing club consisting of the best voices in town. What happens when the Old World meets the New - in the person of Delphine Watzka - becomes one of the great adventures of Fidelis's life. Delphine meets Eva and is enchanted. She meets Fidelis, and the ground trembles. These momentous encounters will determine the course of Delphine's life, and the trajectory of this brilliant new novel in which Louise Erdrich creates a world filled with memorable characters who grapple with the worst and best of human nature

  • Darryl Brock: Havana Heat : A Novel
    Af Darryl Brock (2004)
    Summary: Set in the golden age of baseball, Havana Heat transports readers to 1911 America, where real-life pitcher Luther "Dummy" Taylor is trying to work his arm back into fighting shape. Though deaf, Taylor helped lead John McGraw's New York Giants to the pennant, winning 115 games between 1900 and 1908. But an injury relegates him to the minors, and he dreams of one last shot at the big leagues while on a barnstorming trip to Cuba. There, while he faces off against the tough Havana teams, Taylor meets a deaf Cuban boy with a spectacular pitching arm. In young Luis, Taylor sees his chance for redemption—and a way to win them both Giants uniforms. But baseball's changing politics and growing unrest in Cuba threaten his plans and force him to confront the choices that have brought him to this crossroads in his life

  • Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game
    Lydbog (net):

    Ender's Game

    Summary: From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game — adapted to film starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford — is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy's recruitment into the midst of an interstellar war. In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel. THE ENDER UNIVERSE Ender series Ender's Game / Ender in Exile / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind Ender's Shadow series Ender's Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight Children of the Fleet The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) The Swarm / The Hive Ender novellas A War of Gifts / First Meetings

  • Ann Patchett: Bel Canto
    Lydbog (net):

    Bel Canto

    Af Ann Patchett (2004)
    Summary: Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award Winner of the Orange Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21 st Century ""Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book."" —Washington Post Book World New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett's spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers. Patchett's lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance

  • George R. R. Martin: A Storm of Swords
    Lydbog (net):

    A Storm of Swords

    Summary: THE BOOK BEHIND THE THIRD SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES, AN ORIGINAL SERIES NOW ON HBO. Here is the third volume in George R. R. Martin’s magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings . As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R. R. Martin’s stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction. A STORM OF SWORDS Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as violently as ever, as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey, of House Lannister, sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the land of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, the victim of the jealous sorceress who holds him in her evil thrall. But young Robb, of House Stark, still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Robb plots against his despised Lannister enemies, even as they hold his sister hostage at King’s Landing, the seat of the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world. . . . But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost line of civilization. In their vanguard is a horde of mythical Others—a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords. . .

  • Donna Tartt: The Secret History
    Lydbog (net):

    The Secret History

    Af Donna Tartt (2004)
    Summary: A Read With Jenna Book Club Pick International Bestseller "Enthralling. . . . A remarkably powerful novel." —The New York Times In this brilliant novel from Donna Tartt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch, comes a richly textured and hypnotic story of golden youth corrupted by its own moral arrogance. Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampeden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life—in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable. Yet as Richard was accepted and drawn into their inner circle, he learned a terrifying secret that bound them to one another. . . a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life. . . and lead to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning...

  • David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas
    Lydbog (net):

    Cloud Atlas

    Af David Mitchell (2004)
    Summary: #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction Featuring a new afterword by David Mitchell and a new introduction by Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow One of the New York Times ’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon. List of Readers: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing , read by Scott Brick Letters From Zedelghem , read by Richard Matthews Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery , read by Cassandra Campbell The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish , read by John Lee An Orison of Sonmi~451 , read by Kim Mai Guest Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After , read by Kirby Heyborne

  • Lydbog (net):

    Dracula

    Af Bram Stoker (2004)
    Summary: This blood-curdling tale of thirsty vampires continues to hold audiences spellbound more than a century after its publication. Summoned to assist with legal matters regarding a real estate transaction, young Englishman Jonathan Harker journeys to the dismal, dreary castle of Count Dracula in Transylvania. The fledgling solicitor is completely unprepared for what he will discover in the days to come—and the horrifying chain of events sparked by his unsettling stay with the mysterious Count. The Dracula mythology has inspired a vast subculture, but the story has never been better told than by Bram Stoker. He succeeds entirely in his aim to terrify. His myth is powerful because it allows evil to remain mysterious, unconquerable by strength of mind or virtuous action. Van Helsing's high-thinking and scientific skill cannot resist the dreadful potency of the undead. The high virtue of Lucy can simply be drained away, as her blood is drained away, until she too joins the vampire brood. Only the old magic—a crucifix, garlic, a wooden stake—can provide effective weapons against the Count's appalling power

  • Stephen King: Song of Susannah
    Lydbog (net):

    Song of Susannah

    Af Stephen King (2004)
    Summary: The penultimate volume in the Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah , a #1 New York Times bestseller, is a pivotal installment in the epic saga. Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, the Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. Here is the penultimate installment

  • Stephen King: The Dark Tower
    Lydbog (net):

    The Dark Tower

    Af Stephen King (2004)
    Summary: Creating "true narrative magic" ( The Washington Post ) at every revelatory turn, Stephen King surpasses all expectation in the stunning final volume of his seven-part epic masterwork. Entwining stories and worlds from a vast and complex canvas, here is the conclusion readers have long awaited—breathtakingly imaginative, boldly visionary, and wholly entertaining. Roland Deschain and his ka-tet have journeyed together and apart, scattered far and wide across multilayered worlds of wheres and whens. The destinies of Roland, Susannah, Jake, Father Callahan, Oy, and Eddie are bound in the Dark Tower itself, which now pulls them ever closer to their own endings and beginnings...and into a maelstrom of emotion, violence, and discovery