This short story from the author of "I Was a Rat!" and "Clockwork" takes place in an unnamed kingdom, where a girl named Lila has been raised by her firework-maker father. She wants to follow in his footsteps, but he thinks a girl's place is to get married. Meanwhile, her best friend Chulak is planning to run away with the kings talking white elephant, Hamlet, whom Chulak takes out for exercise.
The author of "His Dark Materials" brings us this short, award-winning tale of horror, in which a desperate clockmaker's apprentice accepts an offer of help from a devilish doctor, and a sweet innkeepers daughter struggles to help an innocent little boy who has something seriously wrong inside him.
This story, supposedly told to N. E. Bode by the nuns themselves, is about a boy named Oyster R. Motel (!), raised in the convent where he was left in a basket as a tiny baby. Though the unpleasant Mrs. Fishback (who "helps" the silent nuns with any business that requires speaking) has nothing nice to say about Oyster, he is clearly loved by the nuns - especially Sister Mary Many Pockets, who found him on the steps.
Two of my favorite authors teamed up in 1990 to write this irreverently funny take on prophecy, the Antichrist, and Armageddon. Then audiobook reader Martin Jarvis joined the party and kept me in stitches for a week's worth of my daily drive to and from work.
Now, in the third installment of the "Johnny Maxwell" trilogy, Johnny adds a new skill: time travel. At first, his interest in the World War II bombing of a street in his town only extends as far as a school project. Then he gets mixed up with a mad lady named Mrs. Tachyon, who has been around since his grandfather was a boy
This second Moist von Lipwig novel also seems to be the last book in the long-running "Discworld" series. It's a pity, too. For even after so many years and so many books, this one seems full of youthful energy and the promise of things to come.
If you had a name like Moist von Lipwig, you would probably change it. Especially if you were a con artist with a forgettable face and a criminal mind. Moist changes more than his name. He changes his appearance, changes his address, and with his gift of persuasion he changes the net worth of a lot of people, usually by taking advantage of their innate greed. Through one scam after another Moist has become very rich, but he keep…
The 25th title in the popular "Discworld" series is called "The Truth2, and to tell the truth, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In the tradition of "Moving Pictures" and "Soul Music", it introduces a new hero who, in turn, introduces a new pop-culture art form into the fragile reality of Ankh-Morpork. Unlike those two prior instances, however, the journalist with the movable-type printing press who introduces the concept of a daily news…
This is the story of four siblings, between the ages of six and thirteen, whose mother leaves them sitting in a parked car in a strange town and never comes back. Sammy, the baby of the family, is stubborn and proud, considered a trouble child by many adults. Gentle, soft-spoken Maybeth, on the other hand, is often mistaken for a mentally retarded child. Boy genius James wakes up every day realizing that Its still true. And D…
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Paul Revere and the World He Lived In" revisited that world in this book, which won the Newbery Medal in 1944. It views the early stages of America's struggle for independence from the British Empire through the eyes of a young silversmith's apprentice.