Book picks similar to
Alfie Slider vs the Shapeshifter (Alfie Slider, #1) by Sarah Dixon
stand-alone
wrote
elves-vampires-and-others
low-fantasy
Basketball (or Something Like It)
Nora Raleigh Baskin - 2005
Basketball clinics, a revolving door of coaches, incensed parents, and the importance of the right sneakers—is that what the game is about? Told from the perspective of four unlikely friends, Nora Raleigh Baskin's poignant novel focuses on the action, drama, and fun of playing ball and explores what it takes to be a winner of the game—both on the court and off.
The Lockdown Diary of Tom Cooper
Spencer Brown - 2020
Stuck inside a small flat with sole responsibility for his two single-digit children, Tom is plunged into a world of home schooling, supermarket feuds and alfresco workout sessions, not to mention keeping tabs on ageing parents who won’t stay home.Faced with the problems of cash-strapped tooth fairies, buying a rat trap online and an NHS-supporting arms race with an elderly neighbour, Tom realises he must rise to the occasion, but when his girlfriend asks for an erotic photo of his rapidly deteriorating body, it may be one step too far...Join Tom as he navigates lockdown in this hilarious stand-alone novel from the author of The Rebuilding of Tom Cooper.
An Android Dog's Tale
D.L. Morrese - 2013
He is a construct and an employee of the Galactic Organic Development Corporation, which searches the galaxy for primitive sentient species to save from extinction, and then transplants colonies of them to Corporation agricultural planets where they can live happily and safely. The transplanted species survives, and its members produce some of the most expensive and sought-after food in the galaxy, which the Corporation profitably sells to developed worlds with this guarantee:Caringly grown, cultivated and harvested by simple sentient life forms.No artificial ingredients, pesticides, herbicides, or mechanized equipment used in processing.Guaranteed 100% organic. Of course, keeping the primitives primitive enough to ensure the Corporation’s promise of natural purity can be a challenge, especially when they’re like those it found twenty thousand years ago huddling in caves and scraping a meager and precarious existence on a pale blue planet in the Milky Way’s Orion–Cygnus spiral arm. The humans keep trying to change things.An Android Dog’s Tale is the 15,000-year episodic story of one canine mobile observer android who must make choices about what he wants to accomplish in his artificial life. Does he accept the wisdom of his makers or does he dare to question?This book is available in eBook and trade paperback editions.
Stepping Up
Robert Culp - 2013
So begins the story of Sonia MacTaggert. An engineer by education with dreams of actually earning a living as one, she is stuck in a dead-end maintenance job servicing the engines of starships that put into port at Tammuz. When she finally lands an engineering position on the starship Night Searcher, she finds herself thrust into the unfamiliar world of interstellar exploration on a ship with a classified mission. Has her quest for a new life and career gotten Sonia more than she bargained for? The voyage of the Night Searcher tests not only the technical savvy of the fledgling engineer, but her character and leadership, as she's faced with challenges she could never have seen coming.
Into the Fold (Kan Savasci Cycle, #3)
Chase Blackwood - 2019
Within its shadowy depths the greatest of the old gods had carved a world unto himself. A place unrivaled in its beauty, obscurity, and danger.Trapped within The Fold, under the tutelage of the last arkeinists, Aeden must overcome his greatest obstacle, or die trying.
Literature Connections Sourcebook: A Wrinkle in Time and Related Readings
McDougal Littell - 1997
The Electric Kingdom
David ArnoldDavid Arnold - 2021
Among the survivors are eighteen-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico's father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives Life after Life in an attempt to put the world back together. As swarms of infected Flies roam the earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and love in a world gone dark. The Electric Kingdom is a sweeping exploration of art, storytelling, eternal life, and above all, a testament to the notion that even in an exterminated world, one person might find beauty in another.
Folk'd
Laurence Donaghy - 2012
Callcentre worker. Young father. Danny’s not entirely happy with his life. He finds himself tortured by the "what ifs", and by one in particular – what if his casual girlfriend hadn’t told him she was pregnant before he finished his university degree? What if, out of some sense of decency and not wanting to be like his own father, he hadn’t “done the right thing” and dropped out to support her and the baby?When Danny comes home from work after a particularly bad day to find his girlfriend and baby son have vanished, Marie Celeste like, into thin air, it begins a series of events that quickly moves beyond a simple missing persons case. Danny begins to uncover the Morrigan family's real purpose in this world, a world of lurking danger and concealed horror, where the line between mythology and reality blur. Before he knows it he’s living another life where (seemingly) he has everything he ever wanted…a good job, no responsibilities…but what is the cause of this change? Where have his family gone? Why doesn’t anyone remember his old life?And most importantly, does he want it back?Folk’d interweaves a very modern tale of unexpected parenthood and responsibility set in contemporary Belfast with ancient Irish mythology and the supernatural. In Folk’d and its sequels, Folk’d Up Beyond All Recognition and Completely Folk’d, we are taken on a humorous, sometimes horrifying, always enthralling journey from modern-day Belfast to prehistory as the full and tragic tale of the Morrigan family is told.
No Place of Angels
Meg Hutchinson - 1998
Certainly jealousy plays a part: Maria believes that young Ryder Tempal would be hers with her pretty daughter out of the way, and throws Carys out of the house to fend for herself. Befriended by Alice, a young woman in domestic service, Carys herself takes a job as a housemaid and is lucky enough to find in the mistress of the house a friend and patron. Maria continues with her vicious scheme until Fate intervenes to punish her wicked ways; but for Carys, the reward of virtue is lasting love.Carys Beddows cannot understand why her mother hates her so much. Certainly jealousy plays a part: Maria believes that young Ryder Tempal would be hers with her pretty daughter out of the way and throws Carys out to fend for herself.Good fortune leads the girl to Ridge House, and a position as housemaid. The mistress there takes a shine to the gentle girl with the tragic past, and recognises her talent for drawing when she sees Carys's sketches of a young man on the heath. This young man is Reuben Fereday, and he is destined to meet Carys again .
The Boy Who Cried Over Everything
Betsy Childs - 2011
An experience with a slingshot and a sparrow helps him realize that it's okay to cry when you are sad, but it's best not to cry when you're mad.
DEAD: Box Set 2
T.W. Brown - 2013
Winter is coming... As survivors around the world struggle to get their feet under them in a world overrun by the walking dead, a new problem rears its head. As unstoppable as any horde of zombies, the seasons march on, heedless of the fragility of the human race. The first winter is approaching. Up in the mountains of northeastern Oregon, Steve's band settles in but discover something so horrible that it may destroy them before the weather has a chance. Kevin faces ghosts from his past while struggling to maintain unity among his people. In other parts of this dead world, a team of scientists struggle to devise a cure... A new pharaoh rises in Egypt... Chad learns he will do anything to keep his daughter safe... Juan struggles with the demons of his past that tell him he is unfit to lead...or love... A military unit tries to restore order at any cost... Dead: Winter The first winter has come, and with it, new problems. No longer are the zombies the biggest threat to survival. With the global infrastructure gone, people are forced to do whatever it takes to survive...even the unthinkable. Steve faces his toughest decision yet as he tries to lead his people through one nightmare after another. Kevin risks everything to save one girl and finds himself in the middle of a military fight for power. Juan fights his way home, but soon finds himself leaving the island...at the worst time possible. Two women set out for London...but one has a secret that she is keeping under wraps. One man seeks to be a god as a new exodus occurs in Egypt. A soldier abandons his post, but can he escape his duty? The darkest days have come now that winter has most of the world in its clutches. Dead: Siege & Survival Several months have passed since the dead began to walk. The first winter has taken its toll in more ways than one as humanity continues to struggle to survive. Not every threat to humanity comes form the undead as so many have discovered man's ability to sink into depravity with the absence of law and order. Time and again survivors have fought, run. and regrouped. Yet, there seems to be no respite, and as winter draws on...things become more and more difficult to endure. A new threat seems to materialize even before the last can be dealt with. And if the physical toll was not enough, the hours of isolation and the time left with one's thoughts can become just as destructive. How much more can you take? Dead: Confrontation
The Institute
Steven King - 2019
A VERY SMART KID IS KIDNAPPED, HIS PARENTS KILLED AND SENT TO A PLACE CALLED "THE INSTITUTE." THE EXPERIENCES OF HIM AND OTHER SMART KIDS ARE DESCRIBED.
Hard Drop
Will van der Vaart - 2013
Their objective is classified, marked only by coordinates leading them into a deserted city at the heart of the fighting. From the beginning, everything possible goes wrong. A missile strike rocks the carrier mid-launch, and only a fraction of the unit reaches the surface alive.Outmanned, outgunned, and scattered, with a hard deadline to orbital bombardment looming, it is up to Drop Commander Tyco Hale to rally his troops and reach their objective. But what they find, hidden deep in the tunneled passages under the city, will change everything about what he fights for and what he believes in. With the unit in tatters and loyalties divided, the choice he makes in the dark will seal all of their fates - and much more besides.
Frankenstein (Raintree Short Classics Series)
Diana Stewart - 1991
If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image
but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.
A Rosie Life In Italy 2: What Have We Done?
Rosie Meleady - 2021
Well, that is what Rosie did.Buying the house was an accident. She only went out for bananas.Rosie embarks on renovating her 22 room ‘new’ home in Italy with a non-negotiable move-in date of Christmas Eve.Surrounded by a cast of interesting characters, the Irish woman learns the Italian way of life and house renovating in the country she wants to call home. But when the project manager goes AWOL, non-Italian speaking Rosie has no option but to take control with the help of a translation app.With no heating, windows disappearing, mystery holes in the garden, water flooding down the stairs, a pandemic destroyed business and with a move-in date that seems more laughable than doable, Rosie begins to question if she was crazy to follow through on her fabulous midlife crisis dream of renovating a villa in Italy.