The Picture of Dorian Gray (Graded Reader, Level 4 - Intermediate)A young man named Dorian Gray has a portrait painted of himself. The artist and another friend convince Dorian that the only important thing in life is beauty, which causes Dorian great distress as he realises that he must age and therefore lose his beauty. To prevent such a catastrophe he sells his soul in exchange for the ability to remain young and attractive forever. But something sinister is lurking in the portrait which he had painted of himself...
Only Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable could track down the being who has kidnapped the Great Karlini in a bespelled castle. Soon Max finds himself caught up in a war between Death Gods, necromancers, and a sorcerer/detective.
Added by: susan6th | Karma: 3133.44 | Fiction literature | 25 February 2010
2
Eternitys End
After seven years of captivity at the hands of interstellar pirates, Star Rigger Renwald Legroeder escapes to the Centrist Worlds, thinking himself free to return to rigging. Instead, he finds himself a target of a conspiracy that stretches across light-years—from the Centrist Worlds to the pirate stars beyond—a conspiracy that has survived interstellar war and claimed the lives of millions, both human and alien.
Added by: susan6th | Karma: 3133.44 | Fiction literature | 19 February 2010
4
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Alan is a middle-aged entrepreneur in contemporary Toronto who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in the bohemian neighborhood of Kensington. This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman, who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings, moreover, that grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, and among his brothers is a set of Russian nesting dolls.
Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity.
