Manji, the immortal swordsman, lies imprisoned in the bakufu stronghold of the mysterious Habaki Kagemura. Seeking to impart the life-extending powers of the Manji’s kessen chu bloodworms to other humans, Kagimura orders his medical examiners to discover the secrets of Manji’s amazing regenerative abilities. Using a series of convicts as live subjects in an increasingly grisly series of twisted experiments, Burando, Kagimura’s lead medical examiner, begins to grow more desperate and sickened with each horrifying failure. And through it all, Manji lives, and regenerates, and bides his time for the moment that he can pay back his tormentors... limb by limb!
For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book
Rin has spent countless days chasing the murderer of her parents, and now she has Anotsu Kagehisa where she wants him, but the deathly ill Anotsu is too sick for the honor-bound Rin to strike down. But such is not the case for the students of the Shingyötö-ryü, who are out to avenge the death of their sword master, and they have Rin captured and Anotsu cornered. The spirit of revenge is thick in the air — and about to get thicker as Manji, Rin’s immortal bodyguard, finally reunites with his charge as this pot of retribution prepares to boil over. And so Manji’s faced with a strange irony — to save Rin, he must cut down the men who are out to kill Anotsu, Manji’s sworn enemy!
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
Hana Ibuki, a cheerful soul, waltzes into Maria’s life and befriends her right away. She even convinces wary classmates to join Maria’s choral group. There’s something suspicious about Hana’s help, however, especially since misconceptions about Maria occur every time Hana is involved. Is Hana really a friend or actually a foe? -- VIZ Media
Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
The immortality of the captive Manji is being sorely tested, as the horrifying experiments commanded by Habaki Kagimura in the dungeons below Edo castle continue. One of Kagimura’s doctors, Ayame Burando, has already gone half-mad, tormented by the sickening mutilations intended to unlock the secret of passing Manji’s amazing regenerative powers to others, and Burando’s replacements have upped the ante with their utter incompetence. Meanwhile, Manji’s charge, Rin, is desperately trying to find him, but Edo’s brutal police are on her trail, and the race is on for Rin to free her immortal bodyguard before she joins him behind bars!
Now streaming on Netflix and BBC iPlayer! The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars in Gretchen McNeil's sharp and thrilling sequel to Get Even. Perfect for fans of E. Lockhart, Karen M. McManus, and Maureen Johnson. The members of Don't Get Mad aren't just mad anymore . . . they're afraid. And with Margot in a coma and Bree under house arrest, it's up to Olivia and Kitty to try to catch their deadly tormentor. But just as the girls are about to go on the offensive, Ed the Head reveals a shocking secret that turns all their theories upside down. The killer could be anyone, and this time he—or she—is out for more than just revenge. The girls desperately try to discover the killer's identity as their own lives are falling apart: Donté is pulling away from Kitty and seems to be hiding a secret of his own, Bree is sequestered under the watchful eye of her mom’s bodyguard, and Olivia's mother is on an emotional downward spiral. The killer is closing in, the threats are becoming more personal, and when the police refuse to listen, the girls have no choice but to confront their anonymous “friend” . . . or die trying.
