The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell’s fifteen-year-old son, Peter. Brilliantly conflating the au…
Gertrude and Claudius are the “villains” of Hamlet: he the killer of Hamlet’s father and usurper of the Danish throne; she his lusty consort, who marries Claudius before her late husband’s body is cold. But in this imaginative “prequel” to the play, John Updike makes a case for the royal couple that Shakespeare only hinted at. Gertrude and Claudius are seen afresh against a backgrou…
An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war. Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene i…
Lara Lington has always had an overactive imagination, but suddenly that imagination seems to be in overdrive. Normal professional twenty-something young women don’t get visited by ghosts. Or do they? When the spirit of Lara’s great-aunt Sadie–a feisty, demanding girl with firm ideas about fashion, love, and the right way to dance–mysteriously appears, she has one last request: Lara …
The tale begins as an investigation into the strange stories of an “Opera ghost,” legendary for scaring performers as they sit alone in their dressing rooms or walk along the building’s labyrinthine corridors. Some even think they’ve seen the ghost in evening clothes moving in the shadows. But it isn’t until the triumphant performance of beautiful soprano Christine Daaé that the Phan…
Mafatu has been afraid of the sea for as long as he can remember. Though his father is the great chief of Hikueru-an island whose seafaring people worship caourage-Mafatu feels like an outsider. All his life he has been teased, taunted, and even blamed for storms on the sea. Then at age fifteen, no longer willing to put up with the ridicule and jibes, Mafatu decides to take his fate into his o…
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill …
The Western Territories, 1880. For four years,Civil War veteran and former U.S. Cavalry CaptainJonas P. Hollister has been rotting in a prison cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His crime: lying about the loss of eleven soldiers under his command . . . who he claims were slaughtered by a bandof nonhuman, blood-drinking demons. But now a famous visitor, the detective Allan Pinkerton, has arriv…
SC Cilandak ( Pink / Connecting ) When the teacher passed away, Russell think that Hominy Ridge School will shut down for good. No such luck, Russell and his schoolmates are about to be ruled by a new teacher who's Russell's worst nightmare. Despite stolen supplies, rustic vandalism, a blazing boys privy, and more snakes than you can shake a stick at the new teacher will keep the school afl…
Jamie Grimm is a middle schooler on a mission: he wants to become the world's greatest standup comedian--even if he doesn't have a lot to laugh about these days. He's new in town and stuck living with his aunt, uncle, and their evil son Stevie, a bully who doesn't let Jamie's wheelchair stop him from messing with Jamie as much as possible. But Jamie doesn't let his situation get him down. When …