Catalog Search Results
Author
Formats
Summary
In the depressed mill town of Coketown, schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind lives to impose his version of education: feeding the mind while starving the soul and spirit. Inflexible and unyielding, he places conformity above curiosity, and logic over sentiment, only to have his philosophy warp and destroy the lives of his own family. 'Hard Times' is Dickens's scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy.
Author
Series
Appears on list
Summary
Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they can hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful that Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the...
Author
Series
Unwanteds volume 5
Summary
Alex and his friends from Artimé are stranded on a newly-discovered island, and they are not alone, while in Quill, his twin Aaron's power base grows as he joins with an unlikely ally in a risky plan to finally conquer Artimé.
4) Hard times
Author
Series
Summary
"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...
6) Outlaw
Author
Summary
The children of Britain's ambassador to Burkina Faso, fifteen-year-old Jake, who loves technology and adventure, and thirteen-year-old Kas, a budding social activist, are abducted and spend time in the Sahara desert with Yakuuba Sor, who some call a terrorist but others consider a modern-day Robin Hood.
Author
Summary
Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Laurel Hill and her daughter Skye live on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children, and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. They live frugally, eking out a living with Laurel's patchwork of jobs. When their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental without any warning, they are pushed farther to the margins. Suddenly the independence that has defined...
9) Bleak House
Author
Series
Summary
Bleak House is one of Dickens' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city's underworld, and of the law's corruption and delay, draw upon the author's personal knowledge and experience....