Air, land, . . . and sewer? Exiled for centuries to a primitive planet, the people of Aerros have learned to live without animals or higher technology but using their genetically engineered plants, cultures, and Wing cousins to survive instead. Over time, they improved the Wings, from flying idiots to a productive serving class. But there are some places that feathered appendages just wont fit. The humans who handle these less-than-pleasant tasks are provided extra assistance and special privileges to make up for such work. Pete is just a boy, but hes quick and agile and can get into all of those tight spaces to help his father maintain the sewers, but he could do without the older apprentices hazing. Left in the dark, filthy tunnels by his fathers apprentice, Pete is rescued by Jared, a unique descendant of both human and Wing. This chance intervention sets Pete, Jared, and their friends on a path that will eventually bring the true problem of the settlement to light.
Air, land?and sewer? Exiled for centuries to a primitive planet, the people of Aerros have learned to live without animals or higher technology, instead using their genetically engineered plants, cultures, and Wing cousins to survive. Over time, they improved the Wings, from flying idiots to a productive serving class. But there are some places that feathered appendages just won?t fit. The humans who handle these less-than-pleasant tasks are provided extra assistance and special privileges to make up for such work. Pete is just a boy, but he?s quick and agile and can get into all of those tight spaces to help his father maintain the sewers, but he could do without the older apprentices? hazing. Left in the dark, filthy tunnels by his father?s apprentice, Pete is rescued by Jared, a unique descendent of both human and Wing. This chance intervention sets Pete, Jared, and their friends on a path that will eventually bring the true problem of the settlement to light.
The future is beautiful ... just not for everyone! Ash must escape from his broken war-torn country, fleeing towards mythical Europe, or face murder at the hands of a brutish local warlord. The one slight problem is, few ever survive the horrifying packs of ravenous hunting machines roaming across the depopulated border zone! But his perilous odyssey might be worth it. For in this future Europe, nobody goes hungry or poor. Crime has been as good as abolished, and everyone can pursue their dreams, whatever their passions may be. But when you have the perfect utopia, just how far do the clock’s hands need to sweep to strike dystopia? Masterfully imagined and written, this haunting vision of our future questions what it means to be human, and firmly crowns Stephen Hunt at the vanguard of the science fiction genre.
A propulsive and piercing debut, set ten years before the events of Shakespeare’s historic play, about the ambition, power, and fate that define one of literature’s most notorious figures: Lady Macbeth. Scotland, the 11th Century. Born in a noble household and granddaughter of a forgotten Scottish king, a young girl carries the guilt of her mother’s death and the weight of an unknowable prophecy. When she is married, at fifteen, to the Mormaer of Moray, she experiences firsthand the violence of a sadistic husband and a kingdom constantly at war. To survive with her young son in a superstitious realm, she must rely on her own cunning and wit, especially when her husband’s downfall inadvertently sets them free. Suspicious of the dark devices that may have led to his father’s death, her son watches as his mother falls in love with the enigmatic thane Macbeth. Now a woman of stature, Lady Macbeth confronts a world of masculine power and secures the protection of her family. But the coronation of King Duncan and the political maneuvering of her cousin Macduff set her on a tragic course, one where her own success might mean embracing the very curse that haunts her and risking the child she loves.
Warsaw Boy is the remarkable true story of a sixteen-year old boy soldier in war-torn Poland. Poland suffered terribly under the Nazis. By the end of the war six million had been killed: some were innocent civilians - half of them were Jews - but the rest died as a result of a ferocious guerrilla war the Poles had waged. On 1 August 1944 Andrew Borowiec, a fifteen-year-old volunteer in the Resistance, lobbed a grenade through the shattered window of a Warsaw apartment block onto some German soldiers running below. 'I felt I had come of age. I was a soldier and I'd just tried to kill some of our enemies'. The Warsaw Uprising lasted for 63 days: Himmler described it as 'the worst street fighting since Stalingrad'. Yet for the most part the insurgents were poorly equipped local men and teenagers - some of them were even younger than Andrew. Over that summer Andrew faced danger at every moment, both above and below ground as the Poles took to the city's sewers to creep beneath the German lines during lulls in the fierce counterattacks. Wounded in a fire fight the day after his sixteenth birthday and unable to face another visit to the sewers, he was captured as he lay in a makeshift cellar hospital wondering whether he was about to be shot or saved. Here he learned a lesson: there were decent Germans as well as bad. From one of the most harrowing episodes of the Second World War, this is an extraordinary tale of survival and defiance recounted by one of the few remaining veterans of Poland's bravest summer. Andrew Borowiec dedicates this book to all the Warsaw boys, 'especially those who never grew up'. Andrew Borowiec was born at Lodz in Poland in 1928. At fifteen he joined the Home Army, the main Polish resistance during the Second World War, and fought in the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising. After the war he left Poland and attended Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in Cyprus with his English wife Juliet.
Naples, Italy, during four fateful days in the fall of 1943. The only people left in the shattered, bombed-out city are the lost, abandoned children whose only goal is to survive another day. None could imagine that they would become fearless fighters and the unlikeliest heroes of World War II. They are the warriors immortalized in Street Boys, Lorenzo Carcaterra’s exhilarating new novel, a book that exceeds even his bestselling Sleepers as a riveting reading experience. It’s late September. The war in Europe is almost won. Italy is leaderless, Mussolini already arrested by anti-Fascists. The German army has evacuated the city of Naples. Adults, even entire families, have been marched off to work camps or simply sent off to their deaths. Now, the German army is moving toward Naples to finish the job. Their chilling instructions are: If the city can’t belong to Hitler, it will belong to no one. No one but children. Children who have been orphaned or hidden by parents in a last, defiant gesture against the Nazis. Children, some as young as ten years old, armed with just a handful of guns, unexploded bombs, and their own ingenuity. Children who are determined to take on the advancing enemy and save the city—or die trying. There is Vincenzo Soldari, a sixteen-year-old history buff who is determined to make history by leading others with courage and self-confidence; Carlo Maldini, a middle-aged drunkard desperate to redeem himself by adding his experience to the raw exuberance of the young fighters; Nunzia Maldini, his nineteen-year-old daughter, who helps her father regain his self-respect— and loses her heart to an American G.I.; Corporal Steve Connors, a soldier sent out on reconnaissance, then cut off from his comrades—with no choice but to aid the street boys; Colonel Rudolph Van Klaus, the proud Nazi commander shamed by his own sadistic mission; and, of course, the dozens of young boys who use their few skills and great heart to try to save their city, their country, and themselves. In its compassionate portrait of the rootless young, and its pitiless portrayal of the violence that is at once their world and their way out, Street Boys continues and deepens Lorenzo Carcaterra’s trademark themes. In its awesome scope and pure page-turning excitement, it stands as a stirring tribute to the underdog in us all—and as a singular addition to the novels about World War II.
