Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11526.39 | Kids, Fiction literature | 20 May 2011
4
The Secret of Platform 13
One platform in one of London's busiest stations is an old doorway covered with peeling posters. No one walking by (if anyone did) would guess that it is the entrance to a magical kingdom — an island where humans live happily with mermaids, ogres, feys, and wonderful creatures called mistmakers. Carefully hidden from the world, the Island is accessible only when the door opens for nine days every nine years. A lot can go wrong in nine days. When the beastly Mrs. Trottle kidnaps the prince of the Island, it's up to a strange band of rescuers to save him. But can an ogre, a hag, a wizard, and a fey troop around London unnoticed? And what if the prince doesn't want to go back?
Dirk Pitt, Clive Cussler's aging but still potent superhero, returns in the 16th adventure in this popular series about the director of special projects for the National Underwater Maritime Administration (NUMA). Pitt's NUMA survey ship happens to be in the vicinity when the world's newest and biggest cruise ship founders and sinks, giving Pitt the chance to stage the daring rescue of nearly 2,000 passengers. Among those who perish is a famous scientist whose revolutionary engines powered the ship to her watery grave; while Pitt is unable to save Dr. Egan, he rescues his beautiful daughter Kelly from the sea, and later from a murder attempt aboard the rescue vessel.
A hurricane threatens an undersea resort hotel; meanwhile, Dirk Pitt's twin offspring are trapped at the bottom of the ocean in Pisces, an underwater laboratory. Oh, and Dirk himself swoops in to rescue the hotel, and its guests--but what about his children? Cussler has written a lot of seabound thrillers, and he clearly knows how to put one together to get maximum excitement from minimal material.
In the waning days of World War II, unbeknownst to all but a handful of people, the Japanese tried a last, desperate measure - a different kind of kamikaze mission, this one carried out by two submarines bound for the west coast of the United States, their cargo a revolutionary new strain of biological virus. Neither sub made it to the designated target. But that does not mean they were lost.
Vibrant with the spirit of the Navajo people of the Southwest, Hillerman's new story is a spellbinder, like his Edgar Winner Dance Hall of the Dead and other praised novels. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of the tribal police work together here, trying to solve crimes that resist logic. There are no clues to three homicides or to the attempted murder of Chee. Leaphorn thinks a "skinwalker," or witch, could have attacked the victims, all adherents of shamanism, as they are otherwise unrelated. The skinwalkers represent a schism between witchcraft and the traditional Navajo Way. A second attempt on Chee bolsters Leaphorn's suspicion since Chee is an aspiring shaman.
