Glimmering

“If Stephen King set out to rewrite The Waste Land as a novel, the result might resemble Glimmering.” —The Washington Post Climate change, rampant viruses, blackouts, fundamentalists—the end of the end has arrived. Glimmering, the 1994 dystopian novel by Nebula and World Fantasy Award–winning author Elizabeth Hand, is now timelier than ever. When the confluence of a solar storm and the collapse of the Antarctic ice shelf ignites the atmosphere like grease, those who are able hide behind their walls and masks, seeking the promise of a seductive—and dangerous—future. As the earth erupts in flames, department store heir and editor Jack Finnegan faces his own inevitable death from AIDS in his family’s decrepit mansion near the Hudson River—that is, until an old friend offers him a miraculous cure . . . Christian singer Trip Marlowe has found worldwide success, but the dynamic rock star retains his strict morality and faith. Temptation comes in the form of a mysterious blond waif and IZE, a new drug more addictive than crack and heroin . . . The two men will find themselves on a bizarre collision course as a dark and powerful force seeks to shape what’s left of humanity’s consciousness. “A brutal vision of Apocalypse . . . Hand’s powerful vision of these days of wrath is not so much a protracted self-pitying whisper as a Nietzschean insistence on salvation through creative evolution.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “[A] wild, psychedelic, thoughtful thriller . . . Another dynamite read!” —The Des Moines Register

A teenage girl goes to work for a chaotic family of Jewish immigrants, in a New York Times bestseller that’s “a cause for celebration” (Ann Patchett). In the 1930s, New York is swarming with Europe’s ousted dreamers, alien families adapting to a new world. Rose Meadows unknowingly enters the lives of one such family when she answers an ad for an “assistant” to a Herr Mitwisser, the patriarch of a large household living in an obscure little neighborhood, in a remote corner of the sparse and weedy northeast Bronx. With an uncertain future, and no clear idea of her duties, Rose—orphaned at eighteen and recently turned out by lover—has become a refugee among refugees. Expelled from Berlin’s elite, Professor Mitwisser—a researcher obsessed with an arcane religious doctrine—lives with his wife, a prominent physicist now quietly going mad, and Anneliese, their willful sixteen-year-old daughter. When Anneliese’s fierce longing draws a new outcast into the fold—a vagrant actor running from fame—it’s up to Rose to quell the emotional, sexual, spiritual, and societal tempests brewing within the Mitwissers unsettled home. Hailed by the New York Times as “the most accomplished and graceful literary stylist of our time,” Cynthia Ozick is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Nabokov Award and PEN/Malamud Award, and Heir to the Glimmering World is yet another triumph from the author of the National Book Award finalist The Puttermesser Papers and Foreign Bodies. “A heroine to love, a story we can’t let go of, gorgeous sentences, and ideas to wrestle with. I didn’t just read the book, I devoured.” —Ann Patchett

When a witch gives you fair warning, you'd be wise to listen. Allie and her friends discover a series of cell phone games that do things no other cell phone game can do. The Rings of Connection series creates portals. Hoops and Giggles is a silly early version that allows players to toss virtual balls through virtual hoops. A later game, Beyond the Glimmering Portal, is much more enticing. Creating a portal the players actually step through, it leads Allie and her friends to a place both fascinating and sinister. At the beginning of the game, a beautiful witch tells Allie, “Do not go any further. Please. I’m begging you. It’s all a trick. Don’t go any further. Abandon the game. The words from Dante’s Inferno: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ applies to this place.” Allie really should have listened. NOVELETTE. GENRES: GameLit, YA Fantasy.

Rusty isn’t like the other creatures, and they don’t let him forget it. ------------------------- Mocked and mistreated he longs for adventure, but when his wish is fulfilled, he soon realises it’s nothing like he imagined. When his parents are mysteriously kidnapped during a freak summer storm, he’s forced to leave everything he’s ever known to find them. Along the way he uncovers secrets about their past and is dragged into a distant conflict that could have consequences for the whole of the Oakenwood. A tale about fitting in, the value of friends and the secrets of everyday people, The Glimmering Isle is the first book in the Oakenwood series.

“Another pulse-pounding read!” “The worldbuilding over this series has been incredible. Action, adventure, mystery, subterfuge, double (triple) dealing and more.” “A hard futuristic vision, realistic and vivid.”  In the neon-drenched city of New Pacific, Dawn Moriti is hired by Damien Blackwell to find his missing wife, Elara. A routine investigation quickly spirals out of control as Elara's disappearance proves to be far more complex than Dawn could have ever imagined. Corporate executives within Damien's firm and his ties with the city’s underworld both appear interested in hiding the truth. As the case grows deadly, she finds herself caught between the crossfire of a ruthless company and a cutthroat family intent on keeping its sins buried. The Glimmering Shadow invites readers into the heart of a cyberpunk mystery where nothing is as it seems and every secret has its price. Dive into Dawn Moriti’s deadliest case!

It’s 1999 and the world is falling apart at the seams. The sky is afire, the oceans are rising—and mankind is to blame. While the spoils of the 20th Century dwindle, Jack Finnegan lives on the fringes in his decaying mansion, struggling to keep his life afloat and his loved ones safe while battling that most modern of diseases—AIDS. As the New Millennium approaches, Jack’s former lover, a famous photographer reveling in the world's decay, gifts him with a mysterious elixir called Fusax, a medicine rumored to cure the incurable AIDS. But soon, the "side effects" of Fusax become more apparent, and Jack gets mixed up with a bizarre entourage of rock stars, Japanese scientists, corporate executives, AIDS victims, and religious terrorists. While these larger players compete to control mankind's fate in the 21st Century, Jack is forced to choose his own role in the World's End, and how to live with it. Originally published in 1997, Glimmering is a visionary mix of fantasy and science fiction about a world in which humanity struggles to cope with the ever-approaching "End of the End."

"Francie and friends, however, find all this hard to swallow, and they resist their appointed futures as elementary school teachers and holders of the precious "MRS" degree. Doing the unthinkable, the three move off campus to live in a house with three men - Liz's boyfriend and two handsome, mysterious Southern twins who fix foreign cars in a shop off campus. There the young women's rebellion against expectations deepens, and they begin the real-world education of pursuing their dreams." "Francie yearns to be a writer, and is encouraged by her Russian literature professor. Then she meets Joshua, a talented and dedicated piano student, who presents the ultimate challenge: does she maintain her "virtue," or give in to her sexual desires, finally breaking fully free of repressive "respectability"?".