Oppressive, high stakes Books

To all the world, Alizeh is a disposable servant, not the long-lost heir to an ancient Jinn kingdom forced to hide in plain sight. The crown prince, Kamran, has heard the prophecies foretelling the death of his king. But he could never have imagined that the servant girl with the strange eyes, the girl he can’t put out of his mind, would one day soon uproot his kingdom—and the world.

"Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention...and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET

In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall. Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing—victims of so-called "Gobblers"—and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.

Wren Greenrock has always known that one day she would steal her sister's place in the palace. Trained from birth to return to the place of her parents' murder and usurp the only survivor, she will do anything to rise to power and protect the community of witches she loves. Or she would, if only a certain palace guard wasn't quite so distractingly attractive, and if her reckless magic didn't have a habit of causing trouble... Princess Rose Valhart knows that with power comes responsibility. Marriage into a brutal kingdom awaits, and she will not let a small matter like waking up in the middle of the desert in the company of an extremely impertinent (and handsome) kidnapper get in the way of her royal duty. But life outside the palace walls is wilder and more beautiful than she ever imagined, and the witches she has long feared might turn out to be the family she never knew she was missing. Two sisters separated at birth and raised into entirely different worlds are about to get to know each other's lives a whole lot better. But as coronation day looms closer and they each strive to claim their birthright, the sinister Kingsbreath, Willem Rathborne, becomes increasingly determined that neither will succeed. Who will ultimately rise to power and wear the crown

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide… Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness -- featuring the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess,a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

*"La ciudad y los perros* no es sólo un ataque contra la cureldad ejercida a un grupo de jóvenes alumnos del Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado, sino también una crítica frontal al concepto erróneo de la virilidad, de sus funciones y de las consecuencias de una educación castrense malentendida. Aunada a la brutalidad propia de la vida militar, a lo largo de las páginas de esta extraordinaria novela, la vehemencia y la pasión de la juventud se desbocan hasta llegar a una furia, una rabia y un fantasimo que anulan toda sensibilidad". - Back cover.

A celebration of nonconformity; a tense, emotional tale about the fleeting, cruel nature of popularity--and the thrill and inspiration of first love. Ages 12+ Leo Borlock follows the unspoken rule at Mica Area High School: don't stand out--under any circumstances! Then Stargirl arrives at Mica High and everything changes--for Leo and for the entire school. After 15 years of home schooling, Stargirl bursts into tenth grade in an explosion of color and a clatter of ukulele music, enchanting the Mica student body. But the delicate scales of popularity suddenly shift, and Stargirl is shunned for everything that makes her different. Somewhere in the midst of Stargirl's arrival and rise and fall, normal Leo Borlock has tumbled into love with her. In a celebration of nonconformity, Jerry Spinelli weaves a tense, emotional tale about the fleeting, cruel nature of popularity--and the thrill and inspiration of first love.

"Laia is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire's greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution"--

Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella written by Franz Kafka which was first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect (German: ungeheueres Ungeziefer, lit. "monstrous vermin") and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach. With a length of about 70 printed pages over three chapters, it is the longest of the stories Kafka considered complete and published during his lifetime. The text was first published in 1915 in the October issue of the journal Die weißen Blätter under the editorship of René Schickele. The first edition in book form appeared in December 1915 in the series Der jüngste Tag, edited by Kurt Wolff.

La novela que animó a Stephen King a convertirse en escritor. Un magistral ejercicio del terror más perturbador, que podrían haber firmado Ira Levin o Shirley Jackson. Verano de 1935. En un bucólico pueblo de Nueva Inglaterra, la gente no para de hablar sobre la epidemia de muertes que está asolando el hogar de los Perry. Tras el trágico fallecimiento de Vining, el padre, que se cayó por las escaleras del almacén mientras guardaba la cosecha de manzanas, la familia se enfrenta a una nueva pérdida: la del pequeño primo Russell, que muere en el granero ensartado en una horca que el jardinero jura haber dejado guardada en su sitio. Y, unas semanas después, desaparece una vecina, la adorable anciana de la casa de al lado… ¿Se trata de simples accidentes? Los hijos gemelos de Vining son una pareja de lo más peculiar: cada uno podría leer los pensamientos del otro, pero no pueden ser más diferentes. Holland es sarcástico e introvertido, y todo el mundo le considera una mala influencia para la familia, mientras que su gemelo, Niles, es agradable y generoso, y todos le adoran. Ambos viven inmersos en un extraño juego telepático que les enseñó su abuela rusa. Y puede que el juego se les esté yendo horriblemente de las manos…

On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister... The next morning, three women in and around London—Fatima, Thea, and Isabel—receive the text they had always hoped would NEVER come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, “I need you.” The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty, with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them. The myriad and complicated rules of the game are strict: no lying to each other—ever. Bail on the lie when it becomes clear it is about to be found out. But their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled in their final year of school under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the school’s eccentric art teacher, Ambrose (who also happens to be Kate’s father).

The thirteenth novel in Emile Zola's great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity's capacity for compassion and hope.Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

A golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism. ([source][1]) ---------- Also appears in: - [Different Seasons][2] - [Apt Pupil / Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption][3] [1]: https://www.stephenking.com/library/novella/apt_pupil.html [2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL81621W/Different_Seasons [3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14917077W/Rita_Hayworth_and_Shawshank_Redemption_Apt_Pupil

La extraña y exótica Menzoberranzan, la gran ciudad de la Antípoda Oscura, fundada hace milenios por los elfos oscuros tras su marcha del mundo exterior, es la morada del héroe de "El valle del viento helado", Drizzt Do'Urden. Drizzt, el joven príncipe de una de las casas regentes, llega a la madurez en el mundo cruel y despiadado de su raza, donde el único rayo de esperanza es su maestro de armas, Zaknafein, quien le enseña cómo -y para qué- usar una espada. Dotado de un honor incomprensible para la sociedad sin principios que lo rodea, atenta únicamente a satisfacer los viles caprichos de la reina Araña, el joven Drizzt se enfrenta a un dilema inevitable: ¿podrá vivir en un mundo que rechaza la integridad?

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs. The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.

Darth Plagueis, a Sith Lord who knows the Dark Side so well that he has power over life and death, joins forces with his apprentice, one-day emperor Darth Sidious, to try to dominate the whole galaxy.

An enduring adventure yarn set in pre colonial Africa, culminating in the discovery of a lost civilization ruled by a beautiful eternally youthful queen. "She is generally considered to be one of the classics of imaginative literature and with 83 million copies sold by 1965, it is one of the best-selling books of all time." See more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_(novel)

As the boundaries between worlds begin to dissolve, Lyra and her daemon help Will Parry in his search for his father and for a powerful, magical knife. She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy? The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer. When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once. Lyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted otherworld – Cittàgazze, where soul-eating Spectres stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky. But she is not without allies: twelve-year-old Will Parry, fleeing for his life after taking another's, has also stumbled into this strange new realm. On a perilous journey from world to world, Lyra and Will uncover a deadly secret: an object of extraordinary and devastating power. And with every step, they move closer to an even greater threat – and the shattering truth of their own destiny.

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.

Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.

When the scary, magical world in her grandmother's book of dark feminist fairy tales becomes real, seventeen-year-old Alice, partnered with Ellery, an obsessed fan of the fairy tales, must enter the world to rescue Alice's kidnapped mother.

[The Dark Tower][1] V After escaping the perilous wreckage of Blaine the insane Mono and eluding the evil clutches of the vindictive sorcerer Randall Flagg, Roland and his ka-tet find themselves back on the southeasterly path of the Beam. Here, in the borderlands that lie between Mid-World and End-World, Roland and his friends are approached by a frightened band of representatives from the nearby town of Calla Bryn Sturgis. In less than a month, the Calla will be attacked by the Wolves--those masked riders that gallop out of Thunderclap once a generation to steal the town's children. The Calla folken need the kind of help that only gunslingers can give, and if the tet agrees to help, the town's priest--Father Callahan, once of 'Salem's Lot, Maine--promises to give them Black Thirteen, the most potent and treacherous of Maerlyn's magic balls. He used it to enter Mid-World, and now it sleeps fitfully beneath the floorboards of his church. Meanwhile, in the New York of 1977, the Sombra Corporation plots to destroy the lot at Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street. How can Roland and his friends both save the rose and fight the Wolves? Only by using the magic of Black Thirteen, but how can anyone trust this sinister and treacherous object which is, in actuality, the eye of the Crimson King himself? Time is running out on all levels of the Tower, but unless our ka-tet can defeat the minions of Thunderclap both in our world and in Mid-World, they will never reach that great lynchpin of the time/space continuum which, even now, begins to totter . . . ([source][2]) [1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL81600W/The_Dark_Tower_1-7 [2]: https://stephenking.com/library/novel/dark_tower_wolves_of_the_calla_the.html

The Eyes of the Dragon is a fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King, first published as a limited edition slipcased hardcover by Philtrum Press in 1984, illustrated by Kenneth R. Linkhauser. The novel would later be published for the mass market by Viking in 1987, with illustrations by David Palladini. This trade edition was slightly revised for publication. The 1995 French edition did not reproduce the American illustrations; it included brand new illustrations by Christian Heinrich, and a 2016 new French version also included brand new illustrations, by Nicolas Duffaut. At the time of publication, it was a deviation from the norm for King, who was best known for his horror fiction. The book is a work of epic fantasy in a quasi-medieval setting, with a clearly established battle between good and evil, and magic playing a lead role. The Eyes of the Dragon was originally titled The Napkins. ---------- Also contained in: [Ominbus](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL25080326W)

A troubled insomniac in 1890s England falls suddenly into a sleep-like trance, from which he does not awake for over two hundred years. During his centuries of slumber, however, investments are made that make him the richest and most powerful man on Earth. But when he comes out of his trance he is horrified to discover that the money accumulated in his name is being used to maintain a hierarchal society in which most are poor, and more than a third of all people are enslaved. Oppressed and uneducated, the masses cling desperately to one dream – that the sleeper will awake, and lead them all to freedom.

Philip Pullman's classic trilogy is now available as a stunning, large-format, bind-up edition. Since the first volume was published in 1955, and has now been filmed as "The Golden Compass", the trilogy has been acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, and has won the UK's top awards for children's literature. Today, the fabulous story of Lyra and her daemon is read and loved by adults and children alike. The extraordinary story moves between parallel universes. Beginning in Oxford, it takes Lyra and her animal-daemon Pantalaimon on a dangerous rescue mission to the ice kingdoms of the far north, where she begins to learn about the mysterious particles they call Dust - a substance for which a terrible war between different worlds will be fought...

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.” In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute. As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.

A young girl with a brother murdered years ago decides to find and punish his killer.

Brilliant. Not at all clear that it's a children's book. An extraordinary re-creation of a myth in a way that explains how myths are created, and why they aren't just myths. During a summer vacation in a secluded Welsh valley, three young people find themselves driven by the spirits of three mythical lovers to reenact an ancient tragedy.