Hocus Pocus (Kurt Vonnegut Series)
By Kurt Vonnegut / Genre: Classics, Literary Fiction / Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars (83 reviews)
Eugene Debs Hartke (named after the famous early 20th century Socialist working class leader) describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut’s bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device–a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
Debs (and Vonnegut) see academia just as imprisoning as the corrupt penal system and they regard politics as the furnishing and marketing of lies. Debs, already disillusioned by circumstance, quickly tracks his way toward resignation and then fury. As warden and prisoner, Debs (and the reader) come to understand that the roles are interchangeable; as a professor jailed for “”radical”” statements in the classroom reported by a reactionary student, he comes to see the folly of all regulation. The “”hocus pocus”” of the novel’s title does not describe only the jolting reversals and seemingly motiveless circumstance which attend Debs’ disillusion and suffering, but also describe the political, social, and economic system of a country built upon can’t, and upon the franchising of lies.
At 68, Vonnegut had not only abandoned the sentiment and cracked optimism manifest in Slaughterhouse-Five, he had abandoned any belief in the system or faith for its recovery. This novel is another in a long series of farewells to the farmland funeral rites of childhood.
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Guardian (The Fallen Chronicles)
By Kassandra Kush / Genre: Religious & Inspirational Fiction / Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (41 reviews)
Lyla Evans just wants to be left alone; to fly under the radar and not attract attention. After seventeen years, she knows how the game is played. Her parents are hardly ever home, and when they do show up, they’re quick to anger and even quicker with their fists. With foster care comes the threat of being separated from her two younger siblings, and Lyla would die before allowing that to happen. She’s learned to keep her head down and depend on no one but herself and God to get by.
When a strange man starts paying too much attention to her and her siblings, showing up to rescue them and then disappearing without a trace, Lyla begins to panic that everything she’s been hiding is about to come out. But as she slowly becomes friends with this man and even trusts him with her deepest fears, Lyla learns he has secrets far bigger than her own that will turn everything in her world upside down.
In this story of abuse and rescue, love and faith, angels and demons, an unlikely friendship grows into a fantastical love story appealing and appropriate for readers young and old alike.
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The Silent Deal: The Card Game, Book 1
By Levi Stack / Genre: Europe, Historical Fiction, Teen & Young Adult / Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (41 reviews)
When Viktor and Romulus, two peasant boys, dig too deep into their town’s strange past, they awaken the wrath of a mysterious overlord. As the blood brothers struggle to survive, their search for answers takes them through gambling parlors, bare-knuckle boxing matches, and dark forests full of wild animals and men alike. But even with the help of their friends, can they escape the deathly experiments their foe is creating in Staryi Castle?
Enter the bold lands of the Russian Empire where the colorful characters of The Card Game dwell, from the fortune-tellers and fire-jugglers of the Romani Gypsies, to the dangerous criminals that make up the Thieves World, the predecessor of the Russian Mafia.
An explosive mixture of mystery and adventure, The Silent Deal is a novel that will rip readers through the pages. A perilous journey awaits…
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The Daring Heart (The Highland Heather and Hearts Scottish Romance Series)
By Carmen Caine / Genre: Scottish, Historical Romance, Romance / Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (53 reviews)
(Scotland, 1482) – To the scandalous Lord Julian Gray, marriage is a malady and nothing more.
How can a man even court a lass longer than a fortnight when there are so many pouting lips to kiss?
Roaming the courts of Europe, Julian appears to spend his time drinking wine, wagering gold, and dandling willing lasses upon his knee. But no one knows the man behind the mask. No one knows that he is Le Marin–Europe’s most daring and brazen spy.
But everything changes the night he finds a dagger pressed against his ribs and an alluring hazel-eyed minx in his bed.
Born into the Vindictam, the renowned Venetian family of assassins, Liselle dreams of the day she will be allowed to practice the family craft. And when she is sent to the Scottish court, her dream is finally realized. But is it an honor … or a curse?
As the threat of civil war looms over Scotland, and the king’s own brother conspires with the English to put himself on the Scottish throne, Julian can’t help but be distracted by the mysterious Venetian beauty and her many secrets.
But will it be his undoing?
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Killer Diamonds (Leo Sullivan Presents)
By Michael Goins / Genre: Urban / Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (35 reviews)
Amanda Sanco is a wealthy chick in possession of some of the rarest diamonds in the world. She is also an associate of Hitman, the organizer of the group of seven who are planning to steal them. Never before had they attempted a heist worth sixteen million dollars, or a bounty they felt was worth killing for. When greed overcomes loyalty, a blood trail will lead only one of them to the diamonds. Who will it be of the seven and will they get away alive?
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